Nella Vita
by WBWorlds
Summary: She's the usual prey - easy blood and easy sex…or so it seems.  As Elena begins her recall of a history better left forgotten, Damon becomes immersed in an age old plot that will bring him out of the dark forever…Warning! Sex/Violence/Language/Drug Use
1. Chapter 1  Proxy

Damon slipped off a pair of sleek, chrome-framed aviators and paused to survey the after-five crowd. He smiled an empty, effectual smile at the bartender and, in the process, won himself the adoration of a group of twenty-something's, women mostly attractive in a small town sort of way.

Ahh, the privileges that local celebrity and animal magnetism did afford.

Out of sheer boredom, he returned their ogling with a civil half-smile and an upturned palm, before an order of his usual staple: a tall glass of Woodford Reserve. He sloshed the alcohol around a few times, as if rinsing his palate, waiting for its sweet after burn, waiting to exacerbate the presence of his cannibal-devil-wingman who usually retired early, in and around Damon's third drink.

He sighed as the bourbon slowly took effect, closing his eyes in momentary solace, before the noise and rush of the Grille returned him to the grim formality of spending another evening in Mystic Falls in the all too simple company of Kentucky bourbon, Jack Daniels and a few one liners. Oh, there were plenty of mice to toy with, had he been so inclined, but no bella regazza to set his throat on fire.

Damon stared at his hands in the hard, orange luminescence. They glared back up at him, shining, resplendent; his exterior perhaps the only resplendent thing about him. And he really did look human tonight, the proxy of a man with too much time on his hands and never enough alcohol. After several more glasses of Woodford, it was becoming abundantly clear to Damon that the privileges of celebrity were as useless to him now as they would have been to Marlon Brando in the Peruvian Andes. Exasperation and disgust were written clear across his temples as a change in shift for the bartending staff resulted in a grossly poured bourbon 'on the rocks.'

Damon slowly curled his index finger in the direction of the woman who had delivered his drink. Without a word, she turned on her heels and quickly strode towards him, a flirtatious smile written on her lips, as though the barkeep was sure she was about to receive a very memorable proposition.

As she approached him, Damon crooked the left side of his mouth up in a trademark grin and beckoned her closer with his hand. When she leaned in, Damon put a finger to his glass.

"When you started your shift...do you recall glancing at the register with my list of orders that _specifically_ called for a tall Woodford Reserve, _straight_...as in, no ice?"

"I'm sorry...I must have read it wrong. Here, let me just replace that for you..."

As she extended her hand to retrieve the glass, Damon brushed it aside forcefully.

"That won't be necessary. I'm not planning on staying for another round."

Damon deposited a substantial wad of cash and change on the marble bar top. Then he locked eyes with the woman, speaking in tones which only she could hear.

"And count your good fortune I don't intend to _dine_ here. Ample enough gratuity, I think."

His pupils dilated as he said this, a flaming orange ring emerging within the circle of both irises, mesmerizing the woman, drawing her further into his words and throwing a sound proof curtain against the wild din of bar talk, pool cues, and the clattering of silverware on plates.

"If anyone should ask," he continued, "I was happy with the service. I left a robust tip and plan to visit again very soon."

The barkeep nodded mechanically, her eyes still carrying a heavy glaze, as if she had just risen from a very recent and very deep sleep.

Damon artfully turned and made his way for the door, drawing with him the glances of several admirers as he passed. A favourite 80's pop song belted its way out of the restaurant sound system and Damon found himself humming a few familiar chords.

As he exited the Grille, Damon drew in a long breath, more out of habit than necessity. As per usual for Virginia in the spring, the air was thick and sultry, settling in his lungs like the smell of salt and perspiration on skin. He had forgotten how fond he was of Virginia weather, how the heat rose up in waves off the women and men in their multitudes, how the wind blew great gusts of it into his nostrils, tantalizing him with every vein of life.

Tonight being no exception, Damon closed his eyes and let himself be guided by infiltrative scents, as vivid to him as colours. He stood for a long moment like this, seeing past the exhaust fumes, the budding magnolia trees to his right, a flash of pollen here, a strong whiff of Old Spice or White Shoulders there. Finally, a heady scent approached him. He felt it trickle down his throat like a pungent, earthy wine, a little dry, a little sweet. It was masked over by a cool, salty ocean smell, characteristic to the younger, beach-hitting crowds. His lips turned upwards into a smirk, canines slightly extending.

When he opened his eyes he saw her; a startling approximation of his old flame, Katherine Pierce, with her long, lithe figure, and chestnut hair curling into a slight wave. He must have been mistaken, surely...

Damon whipped his head around to take in her retreat. As she ascended several steps towards the Grille's entrance, she flashed her eyes in his direction. The same dark chocolate eyes, the same full, pink lips; surely this wasn't the cruel joke it appeared, but a misapprehension of the truth. It couldn't have been Katherine who approached him, for there was nothing preternatural or out of the ordinary about her. Still, he had to be certain. He had to be _absolutely _certain that this wasn't some cleverly orchestrated deception.

All at once Damon found himself climbing the stairs to the restaurant entrance, his excitation mounting as he smoothed back his hair in one even stroke, letting a broad and this time, very genuine smile etch its way across his features.


	2. Chapter 2  Introductions

Author's Forward (Chapter 2): 05-30-2011

Thanks to Schafer for letting me know that this chapter was in need of a serious edit! Also, for some reason every time I upload a document, all of my comma and apostrophe entries seem to be deleted. Please forgive any additional errors. I've run over this several times now, so they should be more sparse.

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><p>He watched her suck on an ice cube from her drink, glancing around the room with vacant, dispassionate eyes. She idly combed her fingers through her hair, gathering it all to one side and beginning to twist it into a giant spiral knot. When this no longer served to occupy her, she shook it all out and let it fall in loose tangles over her back, absently drumming her fingernails on the table top.<p>

The more he observed her, the more he became assured that this girl could not be Katherine. He admonished himself for jumping to such a hasty conclusion and yet continued to stare fixedly at her from across the room, blindsided by her ignorance of him. Damon propped up an elbow and rested his chin lightly on his knuckles, daring her to look at him.

Instead, the girl retrieved a cell phone from her purse and fumbled with it as she dialled out a number, muttering a few light obscenities under her breath. Damon smiled privately to himself, reading her lips and distilling the slight vibrations into sound. His crude gaze wandered from her throat to the length of her collarbone, to her shoulder, and then to the line of her cleavage. It was an ample display for such a slight girl, no doubt employed by the use of a push up bra, he deduced.

Damon sighed out of boredom and hunger, finally deciding that there was no moment on which to act but the present. He sauntered over to her booth with a casual and good natured smile, pausing to rest his hand on the back of an unoccupied chair.

"I couldn't help noticing that you're minus one. Mind if I join you?"

She smiled weakly and shrugged.

"It's alright with me, I guess. I was probably going to be minus one for rest of the evening anyhow."

"Somehow I doubt that," Damon returned with a duplicitous grin.

"How about a drink?" he offered.

"Sure... I'll take a sweet iced tea," the girl answered somewhat apprehensively.

"My, we _are_ modest."

Damon continued to grin as he motioned for their hostess with a slight wave of his hand. In a few short moments, a lively, opportunistic blond appeared, wearing her best fake smile and pushing out her chest in the manner of a bird offsetting its plumage. Damon remained casually indifferent, glancing over the menu and adding a seafood appetizer tray to their order of drinks.

When the miffed hostess finally disappeared, Damon turned his gaze back to the girl.

"Now, I don't mean for this to sound like a come-on...but I could swear I recognize you from somewhere. We've met before, perhaps?"

The girl shook her head and laughed, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders.

"I don't think so...You have a pretty memorable face."

"No relation to the Pierce family then?"

"Nope. I'm a Gilbert, actually. Elena Gilbert. "

Damon nodded as he extended her a hand, with Elena politely following suit.

"Damon Salvatore," he said with a wide grin, providing her an ample viewing of his canines, all white and glistening. He drew her hand to his mouth in an old world gesture and lightly pressed his lips to it, meeting her eyes as he did so.

Elena was certain she was being deceived by the overhead lamp's incandescence. Once a soft, cerulean blue, Damon's eyes now ran a deep purple; a scarred setting to such an unlikely pallor. Unlikely, though not unlikable, given his other assets which, to Elena, reeked of Southern gentility.

Damon released her hand finally, leaving behind a cool, electric current that wound its way into the veins of Elena's right arm.

He reclined further against the chair and smiled disarmingly, while she, in turn, offered up a meagre, speculative glance.

"So, now that we've had our introductions, Elena...I think you should tell me a little about yourself. You could start with something you enjoy doing..."

Elena narrowly held back a grin, caught off guard by his forwardness. She paused for a moment, considering several responses that might make her appear more worldly, but finally opted for the truth.

"Reading...riding horses, going for the occasional bike ride...maybe slipping in a movie night here or there, " she responded with a nervous laugh.

"I suppose that's candid enough. Very safe, very demure though. I have to admit I was picturing something with a little more panache. Mmm...for instance...let's say you're a masseuse in training who likes to wakeboard on her off days...and makes killer fondue."

He exaggerated his tone and widened his eyes a little with this last turn of phrase.

"You're joking. You thought I was going to just make something up?"

"I'm dead serious, in fact. You were glancing off to the left like you were dreaming up something that would have had me very impressed by your sense of spontaneity and worldliness."

He cocked an eyebrow in her direction and smirked.

"Go ahead. Tell me I'm wrong."

"Ok. If I admit to that, I get to ask _you_ the next question," Elena demanded playfully.

"Alright, fair enough," he conceded.

As the hostess returned with their order, Damon folded his arms comfortably across his chest, watching with some degree of amusement as Elena gave careful thought as to what she might ask.

"Well...I haven't seen you around town before and Mystic Falls is pretty much the size of a postage stamp. So, what brought you here? Family? Friends? New job?"

"_Aaand_ she plays it totally safe."

Damon clucked his tongue in feigned disapproval and shook his head.

"Well, if you _really_ want to know I have a brother who I share joint property with. Actually, it was where we grew up as kids. You know the Salvatore boarding house just outside town? That's us. He's been here for a few months now. I thought I'd pop by and check up on the little guy. "

Damon paused to take a slow sip of bourbon and smiled.

"My turn," he said with the satisfaction of a child.

She nodded, picking up a ring of calamari and chewing discreetly.

"What do you find visually stimulating on a man?"

Elena near coughed on her half-masticated bite of food.

"Do you really expect me to answer that?"

"Of course. How else am I going to get to know you if you don't answer?"

Damon took another sip of bourbon and stared at her from over the rim of his glass.

"And don't bother trying to make something up this time. I'll see it coming. "

He continued to stare at her with dead-pan expression as Elena shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She reached for her glass and downed a third of its contents before responding.

"First off, if he has an ego twice the size of his head, then no matter how attractive he is, I don't think I could see past it, " Elena stated, a slight hint of accusation working its way into her voice.

"Well, that was uncalled for. Not terribly sexy either. But...I _am_ willing to overlook it and continue having drinks with you, _if_ you answer my question seriously. "

Elena pursed her lips together, feigning a look of grave internal debate. Then she let out a short laugh and nodded her head in friendly compliance.

"Good girl. You've made the right decision," Damon returned with a small chuckle.

"So...am I allowed to be brutally shallow here? " she asked.

"Hey, it's your answer. Anyways, it's not as if I'm handing out any brownie points. I think I'm the last person qualified for that. "

Elena paused to consider her answer.

"Right. Well, I think it really boils down to how a guy carries himself. Someone who has zero confidence is going to show it in their posture, and vice versa. But...if we're talking purely features, then I suppose I'd have to say the eyes. Maybe a nice smile too but...what a stupid question, honestly. I think you just wanted to pick my brain."

Damon spun his finger along the rim of his glass, generating a softly pitched, undulating noise.

"Tell me Elena, why do you think it was that I approached you?" he asked her, continuing to stare at the glass as it sang its solo note.

"Truthfully? I thought you were trying a little too hard with the kiss-on-the-hand thing. The lead into what's attractive on a guy...totally overdone. At the end of the day, I guess it all comes down to someone wanting to get in your pants."

And there it was. She had given him her raw and unadulterated opinion without relying on any emotional baggage in the process. Damon felt a genuine well of admiration building for her.

"Were it anyone else, I would happily agree but...seeing as how my motives, and I know them well, are slightly more...complex than that, I have to say that you're quite mistaken."

Now it was Elena's turn to raise her eyebrow.

Damon cocked his head to one side, pausing to admire her obvious defensive posturing. Then his lips pulled up into a careful smile as he stood and nonchalantly pushed in his chair, giving the appearance of his departure from the conversation altogether. The first traces of anger and disappointment rose from the surface manicure of Elena's composure.

"So, what? Have I insulted you?" she prodded, trying to illicit a reaction from him.

Damon, requiring no more of an invitation, slowly angled himself back into a seated position and retreated into the booth where Elena sat.

"No. Not at all," Damon stated simply, refusing to waiver in his proximity. Elena stared at him questioningly, her insides awash with confusion and suspicion as she continued to breathe in a heady stream of his cologne.

Damon decided to up the ante. He leaned in close to her ear, making sure that she understood the very intimate nature of his words.

"As much as I'd enjoy treating you as a first and last course meal...somehow, I can't see it affording you the same pleasure. So, I'm going to propose something off the beaten path of my usual dining habits, something that will require a certain amount of...compensation on your part..."

Elena shook her head a little in misapprehension.

"I...I don t understand. What are you saying exactly?" Elena swallowed hard, a nervous lump beginning to settle in her throat as she visualized numerous scenarios and their possible outcomes. None of these seemed particularly desirable.

"Let me make this abundantly more clear..."

Damon slid a hand between her thighs, clutching her roughly through her jeans and making no attempt to hide his actions from any scrupulous clientele or would-be voyeurs. Elena sucked in a sharp breath, fear and trepidation emerging in the slight O-shape of her mouth and in the widening of her eyes.

"It would be to your advantage...if you followed my instructions _precisely_. I don't repeat myself and pity is not an emotion I succumb to easily. But...if you remain pleasant and agreeable, I doubt I'll have to resort to much force... "

"Are you threatening me? Elena hissed, emotions bubbling over.

Damon raised one corner of his mouth, running the tips of his fingers along the length of her carotid artery.

"Hardly. I haven't even begun to show you what that looks like."

He smiled, once again exposing those alarmingly white canines.

"And you're off your fucking rocker if you think I'm going to let you," Elena spat at him, hastily beginning to slide herself from the booth. As she hooked her right leg over the edge of the seat in an effort to stand, Damon very discreetly clamped a hand over her left thigh, bearing down on her with only a fraction of his upper body weight. Its pressure, however, was great enough to make Elena wince.

Damon's smile hardened, its surface veneer gradually slipping to an undercurrent of anger, and as Elena redoubled her efforts to slip her leg out from under his grasp, Damon slowly drove his nails through the denim of her jeans. They snagged at her flesh with such ruthless energy that it took everything within Elena's power not to scream. Damon grazed his lips past her ear, dragging out each syllable in a smooth, hypnotic rhythm that somehow dampened her sensation of pain.

"I'm quite sure you're going to let me. In fact, I'd venture to say that you'll enjoy it. Now...as for that coarse language," he cooed against her skin.

"It's a bit of a turn on, really...and, to be honest, you've done an excellent job of working up my appetite already."

Damon breathed in her scent heavily as he groped the upper region of her uninjured thigh. Elena's muscles tensed beneath his palm, inching her spine as far back as the seat would accommodate, her whole body in retreat.

"Don't pretend Elena," he whispered hungrily.

"I can smell that heat of yours...and don't think I'm going to ignore it for modesty's sake-"

"Fuck you!" she hissed again, angrily cutting him off.

Damon let out a short bellow. This girl was certainly full of surprises and hadn't failed to impress him yet. He stared heatedly in her direction, another self-congratulatory chuckle rising up from his throat.

"Oh, that can and will be arranged..."


	3. Chapter 3  Teeth

Elena turned on her side in her growing awakened state and mumbled unintelligibly, gradually coming to terms with the likelihood that indeed she might have recently been hit with a mild dose of tranquilizer. Slowly her lids flickered open to take in the view from her very own poster-sized bed and despite the sedated quality of her thoughts, a strong surge of relief washed over her as she gazed out the slits of Aunt Jenna's recently updated blinds. The contents of the room were modest, familiar and, most importantly, her own. She didn't question how or when she had arrived home, and in truth, these thoughts couldn't have been less pertinent as she glanced at the clock resting on her bedside table.

Elena breathed out a long and laboured sigh, pulling the comforter snugly against her chest, letting her thoughts drift and her body relax in preparation for more sleep. Her thoughts did wander of course. They wandered all the way to the man with cerulean blue eyes and white teeth.

Slipping further from consciousness, Elena dreamed she stood in the middle of her room, before a large oval mirror with an ornate, wooden frame. She stared at her own reflection in silence, eyes moving to mid thigh, where a red patch suddenly began to emerge through her jeans. As the stain grew larger, Elena began to panic, fearing that she would bleed out if she didn't examine or wrap the wound. She quickly unzipped and shucked off her jeans, but when she lifted her eyes to examine the mirror a second time, the wound had miraculously healed and standing barely a foot from her own reflection was Damon Salvatore, the man from the restaurant. His complexion had taken on an unusually pale glow and his eyes had once again transformed, his pupils framed by a ring of bright scarlet and their surrounding whites steeped with pink. Deep, pulsing veins crept outwards, forming a convoluted web below his lashes and stretching to the far edge of his cheek bones.

Damon stood utterly still, without breath or movement to shunt the growing alarm that filled her. Wordlessly he infiltrated the space between them, taking her face solidly in his hands and devouring her mouth with his in a brutal, senseless kiss.

Elena backed away, furiously wrenching her face from his hands. Then she stumbled and collapsed into the mirror, falling into a storm of glass and wooden debris as it shattered under the weight. She felt the sting of several shards, catching her wrist, her forehead, her jaw line. She folded her arms against her chest and curled her torso forward, scaling in the damage and trying to catch her breath.

Damon slowly kneeled before her, silent as he brushed the side of his cheek against her wounds. Gradually the cheek became an open mouth, his tongue working eagerly over each site of blood.

Elena's heart rate quickened as his mouth learned sentience, moving carelessly to other areas of exposed flesh, lapping at its thin residue of salt, satiated by nothing. More and more, Elena found herself disturbed, aroused, confused, and angered by the illicit movements of his mouth and teeth. How could this man, who had once appeared so menacing, so terrifying not moments ago, be the source of such alien pleasure? And how could she, whose nerves had once signalled danger, telling her, demanding her to run, be drawn now, inexorably and beyond all reason, to the slow, unencumbered journey of his mouth.

She closed her eyes and felt the briefest urge to surrender, as Damon worked with his hands now, groping and kneading her skin until it was plaint and responsive. Elena let her guard fall momentarily, an audible moan escaping from her lips, and it was in this instant that Damon raised his eyes. A strange wash of confusion and muddled consciousness came over Elena as her own eyelids darted open, sensing his withdrawal. The sound of her expectant breathing whooshed in and out of her ears, her heart pumping fiercely against her chest.

Elena saw the vein in his neck pulse quickly too, as though it were synchronized to the spastic rhythm of her heart. Damon's jaw clenched and unclenched in rapid succession. Slowly his lips pulled back into a primitive smile, invoking the return of the steely eyed predator on route to its prey. Elena shook her head, silently and ineffectually trying to reason with him. Her fear had incited a rush of endorphins and she sucked at the air harshly through her mouth, desperately trying to fill her lungs and yet feeling as though her tongue had been forced down with gross amounts of cotton. She crawled backwards from a seated position, her hands scraping against traces of glass, scattered in a thin layer over the wood panelling. Little shards bore into her palms and the backs of her thighs.

He watched her clumsily retreating, injuring herself with every backwards struggle of limbs. Elena saw him glance down at the tiny streaks of blood that mapped a trail over the floor and along her legs. He smiled privately and then, to Elena's full surprise, resting on his knees, he casually began to remove his shirt, sliding each button out of its hole with graceful efficiency. Once it was cast to the floor, Damon's movements became slow and deliberate. He exaggerated every nuance, every expanse in muscle, so that she might know implicitly that his performance was for her benefit alone. Damon curled his upper body forward, contracted his diaphragm and brought his hands out in front of him, dropping his head. Then he lifted his eyes to her so that Elena could clearly see his pupils dilate, a lusty haze descending over him as he snaked his tongue to the floor, lapping at the drops of her blood with hunger and precision.

Elena could barely form a coherent thought as he crawled towards her. Her stomach churned and her mind recoiled even as her body responded with growing arousal. When he had fully approached her, Damon wiped his chin with the back of his hand, lips partly held open to display a new set of canines. Only the lower set was visible, lengthier than human size, each tip as well sharpened as a buck-knife.

"You like our game, I can tell...," he panted hotly, spreading Elena's legs even as she attempted to clasp them together. "But how long can you keep up the fight, hmm?" he baited her, finally prying her legs apart with deliberate force and pushing forward to occupy the newly won space with his hips.

Damon moved his mouth on top of hers, probing it hastily with his tongue and grasping the back of her thigh. A pained, muffled cry ensued from Elena, as he tightened his grip around the tender, injured flesh, while Damon in turn, felt the sudden, small sting of glass against his palm.

"Very nasty scratch you have there...I think I might have something for it."

He moved with catlike reflexes down the length of her torso, feeling her resistance as he lifted her leg above his shoulder and in return sending his warm breath cascading along the outer curve of muscle. Damon trailed his lips and tongue over the reddened flesh, moving his teeth around the glass shard, dexterously positioning it in his bite and extracting it from her quivering thigh. Upon its removal, Elena jerked her hips up with a last gasp of pain and tried to throw Damon off her, the left side of her leg cuffing his neck.

His voice was temporarily muffled by the fleshy part of her thigh as he spoke several unintelligible words and choked out a noise that, to Elena, resembled a sort of laughter. Then, bolting upright with inhuman momentum, he slammed Elena back effortlessly and locked his hand securely around her throat.

Not withholding any of his strength, Damon pressed his chest against hers, crushing her abdomen and causing one last reserve of air to exit her mouth.

"Pull a stunt like that again and I promise I will invent new and very painful ways of making you regret it," he stated coolly, though his eyes hinted towards the more sinister nature of his words.

"Unless of course, that's what you want... "

Elena turned her face to the side and squinted, tears staining her cheeks, hair streaking out in every direction, knots abound. She refused to speak and even to look at him while the shame was hitting her.

"Pretty little moth...," he spoke to her in barely a whisper, lightly resting his lips in the cavity of her throat. At this juncture, Damon could taste all of her blood and salt and perspiration through the thin tissue of his lips. He let out a long sigh, almost a moan.

"I can feel what that is, you know...what it is you crave."

Damon let his hand wander the side of her ribcage, offering her a small degree of comfort, but never fully giving in, never pitying.

When he touched a soft region, inward from the bone of her hip, a warm current travelled up the stem of her spine, pooling at the back of her head. She closed her eyes as he kissed her there once, only to begin her seamless drifting into a white expanse that, to Elena, stretched on infinately and held for her no laws of gravity or concept of time...


	4. Chapter 4  Lucid Dream

Author´s Forward (Chapter 4) : 05-22-2011

Originally, I was only intending to write an erotic short featuring Damon and Elena with a very general S&M theme, however it is evolving slightly and I find myself unable to think of ending it in just several pages. This chapter is more of a preamble into the next few chapters currently being edited, so I apologize beforehand if it feels too short. Chapter 5 will pick up pace once again and features a little more character establishment...as well as the set up for a very interesting cat and mouse sequence...Hope you enjoy. - L.

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><p>Thin filaments of light streamed through an open, corner window, channelling the heat of a mid-morning sun. Elena shifted in her bed, opening her eyes reluctantly and listening to the drone of her alarm clock for longer than usual. Propping herself to one side, she removed the studs from her ears and flopped back onto the mattress.<p>

Elena forced herself to recall the events of the former evening, as one by one a succession of images flooded into her conscious state, mingling with those of her dream and blurring the lines of reality...

_Damon Salvatore._

The name fractured any sense of reason in her and even as she lay nestled in the warmth of her sheets, a sudden, involuntary chill made its way down her back; that cocky smile rimmed with its set of glistening, white teeth, the awkward exchanges, the lurid threats...

Elena quickly reached down to feel her thigh, searching for a tender spot, but found nothing. She ran a hand over the other leg just to be sure, but still there was nothing. No marks, no soreness, no dried blood. How was it possible? She had felt the bite of his nails, deep enough to warrant some sort of impression.

Then in a full onslaught of recall, Elena suddenly realized that she had no idea how she had gotten home. She struggled to form some memory of the events that had taken place after Damon had threatened her, but there was nothing she could remember, save for the dream. Further fuelling Elena's confusion and growing alarm were the clothes in which she was now dressed: a purple camisole, one that hadn't made it out of her closet in months, and a simple pair of boyleg briefs.

Elena jerked the camisole down nervously and stood to examine her bedroom. Furtively surveying its contents, she caught a glimpse of her Silver´s haphazardly slung into the laundry hamper, one leg draped over its edge. Elena flew over to the jeans, lifting them up and carefully appraising what she saw.

Five red rimmed holes, each the size of a fingertip, stared back at her as Elena felt her stomach lurch. This had gone far beyond the realm of believability. In fact, it was verging on the paranormal.

After several moments of clutching the fabric to her chest in semi-catatonic state, Elena mustered up the courage to make her way around the rest of the room. Nothing else seemed to be disturbed or out of place. She even inspected the floor for remnants of glass, and to her relief, there were none.

Finally, Elena marched over to her dresser and furiously began brushing her hair in the hopes that some medial task would calm her nerves. She eyed her reflection in the mirror and decided that perhaps a shower was probably the better of options. Her long hair hung moppishly over her shoulders and her smeared makeup had formed a distinct racoon-like pattern around her lids.

With a grimace, Elena turned to enter the adjacent bathroom she shared with her brother Jeremy, but stopped dead in her tracks when she caught sight of the note posted to its door. It was penned in a messy, old English script, resembling the writing style of no one she knew.

_Elena,_

_I enjoyed our evening together. You're quite a tenacious young thing and I have to admit, I'm rather smitten. That lucid dream took more than a little effort on my part; very feisty mind you have there...and so inventive. Breaking you in may prove to be more of a challenge. I hope you're up for it, though not to imply you have a choice in the matter. Also, loose lips are not a selling feature, so don't go spilling the beans on our little rendezvous... I somehow doubt you'd enjoy the ramifications._

_- D.S._

_P.S. Indulge me and wear something racy tonight. I may pay a visit._

Elena peeled the note off her door and stared at it for a long moment, disturbed by its overtone of threat and provocative post script. She could no longer deny the fact that Damon had somehow brought her home, entered her room and initiated the dream while she slept, though how he had managed it was beyond Elena's reasoning entirely. Even if she wanted to, how could she possibly explain the circumstance to anyone without seeming mildly delusional? But how would Damon know if she did? And for that matter, how had he managed any of this, short of supernatural powers? Was he even human? Was he a demon? A vampire? Or some other cross-breed of man and monster? Could his existence have anything to do with the legends of the town, the mythos of her childhood, re-circulated year after year?

As all manner of explanations suddenly became viable, Elena genuinely began to question her sanity. She forced herself to shirk off her fears and deal with only those concerning the present moment. If he did come again, she would face it when the time came. Hell, maybe carrying a make-shift stake or a few cloves of garlic weren't such bad ideas.

Elena crumpled the note, balling it up in her fist and throwing it into a corner. Then she opened the door to the bathroom, locking it behind her as she entered.


	5. Chapter 5  The House Guest

Author´s Forward (Chapter 5) : 05-23-2011

I have taken a few artistic liberties with this chapter. Several details have been changed from the TV series to fit the continuity of my story line (such as Jeremy s motives for researching Johnathan Gilbert´s journals and his thoughts on the use of the compass, as well as Elena s short lived relationship with Matt). The dialogue was kept very natural, written exactly as one might hear it. I also wanted to reveal a stronger side to Elena here, a reason to why I think she and Damon are so well paired. There´s a good deal of fight and fire in her character as well and he definitely brings it out in her. I am very excited about chapter 6 and hope to have it completed shortly!

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><p>"I'm just saying...what if Johnathan Gilbert wasn't crazy? What if there <em>was<em> some truth behind the conspiracy? I mean, how do we really know what went on in 1864?"

Elena trailed behind her brother as he steadily increased his pace. Jeremy shook his head evasively as she finally regained stride with him. They were both on a return trip from the library and Jeremy found himself regretting his compliance to go along with his sister. His mood had gradually soured after Elena had spent the better part of two hours sifting through old newspaper clippings and fat, dusty texts with local legends abound. Jeremy saw it as redundant, a waste of time even.

"No offence Elena, but you're starting to sound a lot like Johnathan yourself," Jeremy admonished.

"Well, what if there was some weird sort of...epidemic? Or what if-Look at that Serbian guy, Paole, or whatever his name was. Sixteen people died in his village because of-"

"That same guy supposedly cured himself by eating the dirt of a vampire's grave. How much credibility can you possibly give that story?" Jeremy cut in with an exasperated rolling of his eyes. He paused as they turned onto Maple Street and sighed heavily.

"Elena, I already told you, I've looked into this. Yeah, the compass did generate some effect, by his own account at least ...but who knows why. It could have been bioelectrical, pure coincidence, and Johnathan just assumed, because the timing was right, that it had to have something to do with vampires. Look, if you're really that interested, talk to Saltzman. But...Elena, please...don't get too caught up in the history. It's a dead end. I promise."

As they approached the drive, both Jeremy and his sister signalled out the old model Chevy Camaro parked alongside Elena's much humbler Escape, exchanging glances of faint curiosity.

"Don't look at me. No one I know," Jeremy stated matter-of-factly.

Somehow, the convertible's sleek, blue frame and black leather interior struck Elena as vaguely familiar, though she couldn't place why.

"I'll be upstairs," Jeremy shouted to an invisible Aunt Jenna, hoping to avoid the presence of a house guest altogether.

"Elena? You there?" Jenna called from the kitchen.

"Y-yeah. What's up?" Elena responded flatly.

In true motherly fashion, Jenna emerged from the doorway wearing a tentative smile.

"You have a visitor..." she continued, pinching her eyebrows together suddenly into a look of surprise and mouthing a few silent words which Elena could only interpret as-_Since when do you have a boyfriend?-_followed up with-_He s gorgeous!-_and finally-_A little old for you though, hey?_

Elena jerked her head vehemently from side to side, trying to protest, but Jenna merely cocked an eyebrow at her and directed Elena into the kitchen with a slight gesture of her thumb.

And there he was - the human impostor sitting atop one of Jenna s barstools and nursing a tall glass of iced tea. Damon turned as she entered, greeting her with a charming, very convincing smile that burned on the inside with machiavellian heat. Elena could feel it pulling her in, luring her into a broad, open abyss.

"Hello," he said.

"H-ii," Elena returned, barely able to keep her voice on an even keel, her mind compiling numerous methods of escape.

"Damon was just telling me how you two met. Cute story...but, pardon my French, I think Matt is an asshole for standing you up. Damon where did you say you were staying?" Jenna asked, as she resumed her chopping of vegetables in preparation for dinner.

"Ah...the old boarding house, just on the other side of town, heading west. It's been in the family for years, ever since we immigrated here in the 1840's," Damon answered, moving his glass in a circular pattern and causing the ice cubes to clink.

"Your parents still there?" Jenna swept the results of her chopping into a giant salad bowl, finally looking up.

"Sadly no, they passed away quite a while ago."

"Well, you have something in common with Elena, then. I'm sure she's probably already told you...," she trailed off, suddenly realizing that perhaps she had spoken out of turn. Jenna instantly regretted her tactlessness and shifted her gaze to Elena, who had dismissed the comment altogether and was hanging her book bag on a nearby chair.

"Let's save that topic for another conversation...umm, Damon, wasn't there somewhere you needed to be?" Elena looked at him expectantly through the narrowed slits of her eyes.

"Oh, didn't you get my message?...I managed to free up this evening after all," Damon grinned wickedly, countering Elena's obvious insinuation that he should leave. "Dinner is already taken care of."

"Listen, don't let me keep you guys. Elena, just make sure you're home by eleven," Jenna interjected, rummaging through a drawer of utensils. "Huh...where did that spatula go..."she mumbled distractedly, clearly oblivious to the tension that had grown more pronounced between Elena and her visitor.

Elena recoiled from her aunt's sudden intrusion into her life and the ever increasing likelihood that she would be forced to spend an evening alone with Damon. At least for the moment, Elena's anger presided over her fear and she used the opportunity to gather her wits about her and settle on a course of action.

"I'm...just...going to run upstairs and grab a change of clothes. One minute...," Elena managed, in an effort to buy more time. Damon nodded appreciatively in her direction as she retreated from the kitchen, his expression suddenly perking up at her mention of attire.

Her pace slowed when she entered the hall and as Elena considered with what accoutrements she might arm herself, several thoughts came to mind. Certainly garlic was out of the question now, but perhaps a weapon of sorts...Elena's eyes quickly darted over to the corner hutch, where an assortment of Gilbert heirlooms and old silverware had carefully been stored away. She ducked into the living room and paused to glance behind her, listening for the sounds of idle conversation and laugher as they drifted from the kitchen.

Scrupulously, Elena opened the door of the hutch, easing it forward only an inch at a time. As she scoured its contents, Elena took note of an antique cutlery box positioned on the uppermost shelf. It was stained a bright, sycamore green, with an oval fan inlay that hinted its age. Elena opened the shaped lid to reveal its many cutlery decks and finally procured a very large, ivory handled carving knife. The silver blade was polished to a pristine shine, and as Elena held it up to the light, she smiled in satisfaction.

_Boy, will he be in for a surprise_, she thought to herself.

Tucking the blade discreetly against her right hip, Elena sauntered up the stairs to her room, an unfamiliar and terrible glee welling up inside her. She brazenly threw on a short, metallic coloured skirt and a black tank with a plunging 'V', revelling in her newfound confidence that she was a girl who could take care of herself in the face of any threat, supernatural or otherwise. Elena hid the blade neatly in an oversized bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she exited the room.

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><p>Upon her return, she found Damon reclining in one of the upholstered, living room arm chairs. His eyes moved over the lines of her body in crude appraisal, as though she were a tender slab of meat.<p>

"So, your aunt seems to have taken a shine to me," he began cheerfully, as he lifted himself from the chair in one fluid motion.

"What are you doing here? You think you can just come into our home and play me _and_ my family?" Elena demanded.

"Lower your voice," he ordered her in a harsh whisper.

Elena clenched her jaw and tightened her fists until the knuckles of her hand turned a bright white.

"What are you doing here?" she reiterated between teeth.

"Don´t tell me you're this bitchy with all your boyfriends," he countered with a mild chuckle.

"You're a far cry from being my _boyfriend_," Elena retorted, every muscle in her possession contracted and ready.

"Maybe not...but I do maintain all the benefits of one..."

Damon slowly approached her, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger as he continued.

"Although I think, perhaps, if I were...it would spoil all our fun."

Still grasping her chin, Damon cocked her head slightly. He stared at her profile with a nearly amorous look, unaffected by the flare of hatred that now saturated Elena's sight. He closed his eyes, feeling the wash of her tidal fury, feeling it deeply in the sound of her blood. Then he let his hand drop, turning in the direction of the kitchen, where, only seconds later, Jenna appeared. She glanced quizzically from Damon to Elena, and back again.

"I thought you two had already left," she remarked lightly.

"Mm, no. We were...we were just talking," Elena answered, smoothing out her expression into one of casual indifference.

"I was just telling your niece how much I enjoyed my visit. You have a lovely home and...thank you...for putting up with me while I waited for Elena," Damon volunteered with a congenial smile.

"Oh, you're welcome. That's very sweet of you," she replied with a slight blush. "Here...I'll walk you both out."

Elena, for once, was grateful for her aunt's interruption and she suddenly felt a strong compulsion to seize hold of Jenna's arm and divulge everything. But Elena knew, implicitly, that he would leave her no option of recourse and that Damon, in lacking of some necessary human ingredient, would make good of his note's promise.

Jenna opened the door, letting in the cool, early evening air, and pursed her lips together to form a smile.

"Don't worry, I'll have her home by eleven," Damon offered reassuringly, before placing a hand on the small of Elena's back, leading her out of sanctuary and across the front lawn.

There was no turning back now, as they made their way to the drive. Fear and vertigo reached out for her, pulling Elena closer to the ground. Her breathing came in a hard, steady rhythm as Damon opened the passenger side door to his convertible.

She entered.

Damon circled around the vehicle, gliding effortlessly into the driver's side and fastening himself in. A throaty chuckle passed his lips as Damon slid the key into the ignition cylinder, revving the engine a little for Elena's benefit. Then, grinning like a hellion, he draped his arm around the passenger backrest, reversed the car and pulled out onto the street...


	6. Chapter 6  Ground Assault

Author's Forward (Chapter 6) : 05-29-2011

Well...this chapter has sat in works for quite some time. Fortunately, it's quite lengthy and features a lot of sexual tension. It was a very fine line to walk, bringing out a few of Damon's sadistic qualities without making him appear too...unlovable? And also trying to accurately depict Elena's perspective on things, someone who might be a little bit green but has a good head on her shoulders and isn't afraid to let go once in a while...as we shall soon see (hehe). This is the prelude for the boarding house scene which will be featured in chapter 7...which, I'm afraid, may take equally as long due to time crunch and exams. C'est la vie. Ah yes, please let me know if the inclusion of some Italian was too campy/confusing/out of context. Hope you enjoy!

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><p>The sun was low overhead, burning into the dashboard and inducing the effect of a miniature heater. Elena stared mechanically through the windshield, listening to the purr of the V-8 engine and fixing her eyes on a finite point along the horizon.<p>

Damon merged into a thinner stream of traffic, glancing over at Elena once or twice, but mostly keeping her in his peripheral vision. As their silence stretched to ever increasing lengths, Damon finally blew out a long, dramatic sigh. Elena continued to stare at the space in front of her, distancing herself from him as far as the vehicle would allow.

"You're not making this very enjoyable, you know," he said tersely as they approached the westerly edge of town. The landscape had become more rural now, larger homes with sizable acreage occupying both sides of the road.

"So, I'm supposed to make this enjoyable? Is there an e-book on kidnapping etiquette or something?" Elena returned with unmasked sarcasm.

"I'd hardly call it kidnapping. Coercion, maybe, but I'd say you wanted to be here," and he emphasized this point by eyeing her thoroughly from top to bottom.

Elena didn't offer a response. She didn't want to provoke his line of reasoning any further and so, instead, she formed another question.

"Last night...how did you do it? How did you get inside my head?"

Damon's expression darkened a little as he stared into a stretch of open pasture, allowing for the silence to return between them. Elena felt her face redden under the blunt force of the wind, slapping at her cheeks in synchronized rhythm as the convertible picked up speed.

"I think you'll find, Elena, that I'm not a wear-my-secrets-on-my-sleeve kind of guy. There's a price for that sort of information."

Elena pressed on.

"Then what about my leg? I felt what you did to it, and now it's...it's like it was before, like nothing happened. Tell me how you're doing this!"

Damon jerked the steering wheel hard in response, swerving past the shoulder lane and onto dirt. The convertible rumbled and choked on the off-road, wheels spinning and eating up the rough terrain below them. Damon applied more pressure to the accelerator and the car pushed forward several hundred yards until they reached a wide patch of trees sewn in with dense undergrowth. The engine idled as they came to a slow stop and Damon switched off the ignition.

A thick cloud of exhaust settled over the area, creeping into Elena's lungs and prompting her to cough. The frame creaked loudly as she slid open the door, stumbling onto the grass and giving their surroundings a half-hearted examination. She wound her fingers tightly around the strap of her bag, Elena's senses derailed, her brain centers firing off hormone.

"What the hell was that? Are you insane?" she let out.

Damon, already having exited the vehicle, had failed to hide his amusement.

"Well...I think the term is off-roading and yeah, there's a pretty good chance," he replied.

"I don't know what we're doing here. I don't know what you're trying to pull. Please, Damon, just...just take me home," Elena's resolve finally slipping.

"I really don't think you're in any position to be making demands," Damon stated flatly. "I've been very accommodating, I truly have. But, you know, being a gentleman only gets you so far..." He brought a hand round to massage the muscles of his neck, tilting his head on an exhalation.

"It's exhausting...and not all that productive either. I don't know how you humans do it," he continued, smiling coolly in her direction.

Humans? The word ricocheted loudly in Elena's ears as she tried to dissect its meaning. He had revealed something in saying this, something that, to Elena, was more tangible than any insinuation or dream, taking her down all the darker paths of what could be and what was possible. The fear rushed in again, the fear of the unknown, as Elena clutched at her shoulder strap, instantly attuned to the bag's weight and the presence of the knife lying hidden within its folds.

Damon took in her reaction curiously, as a child might examine a caught insect, letting it twitch and flutter helplessly before picking off its wings. And like any child, he wanted very much to play. He wanted to disassemble her, to shake her until her bare bones were exposed. He wanted to taste the recesses of her humanity and experience them infinitely, even as he could not remember his own.

Damon felt her apprehension, saw the slight tremble in her wrist, and his smile broadened.

Elena retreated several steps, keeping her eyes fixed steadily on his. As she weighed her options, Elena decided that her only real means of escape lay in catching him off guard. If she pulled the knife out now, he'd have time to prepare and she would forfeit the opportunity of surprise. Damon clearly had the upper hand in strength, and probably speed as well, but if she made it to the tree line, Elena thought, then perhaps she'd have a chance at hiding well enough to manage some kind of assault.

"You wouldn't be thinking of running off, now would you?" Damon asked pre-emptively, as though he'd somehow heard Elena's thoughts. She didn't answer, looking past him and watching as the moon lifted its nocturnal head in final concession to the night.

_Now. It has to be now_, Elena instructed herself, retreating a few more steps before turning in the direction of the trees and breaking into a sprint. She pumped her arms and legs furiously, every intake of breath as vital as the momentum that propelled her.

Reaching her destination, Elena zigzagged past a cluster of red cedars, entering deeper into a feral, Virginian wilderness of hemlock and rattlesnake fern. She could hear the sound of Damon's laughter, as he pursued her, its faint, subterranean echo resonating between the trees. Elena was breathing hard, her feet becoming more careless as she found herself caught in every gap, snagged by every ground runner she encountered. Her calves and forearms stung from an endless lashing of overgrowth, as she wiped away beads of sweat. Already, exhaustion plagued Elena's muscles, and she knew that very soon she would have to rest.

Spying a clumping of sumac, Elena quickly scurried beneath their foliage, folding her legs up against her chest in an effort to make herself smaller. She darted a hand inside her bag, fishing around for the knife, and as her fingers located its smooth, weighted handle, Elena quietly sighed in relief.

This relief, however, was soon replaced with a gnawing sense of dread as she considered the appropriate usage of the blade. When had she _ever_ used a weapon? She couldn't even recall a time when she'd been in a position of self-defence, apart from her encounters with Damon, and as the gravity of the situation slowly began to dawn on her, a terrible knot formed itself in Elena's gut.

"Oh,_ Eleee-na_...," she heard him beckon cheerfully from within the trees.

"I can't hear you panting anymore...," Damon proceeded with his one-sided dialogue. "Are we playing hide and seek now?"

Elena tried to gauge his distance by the sound of his voice and the faint rustling of leaves. She wagered a few yards, ten at the most.

"I think it's only fair to warn you, I've had plenty of practice at this game...and when I do find you, Elena, you're going to be in for it..."

Elena let the knife rest within the space of her thighs, her hand still wrapped securely around its hilt. Her pulse became frantic as the lower half of two black boots came into view, each decorated with a metal drag harness. The upper sole of Damon's foot tapped at the ground impatiently.

"Are you going to come out? Or would you rather I drag you out myself?"

She held her breath, fingers trembling involuntarily as Elena watched his gradual decent. Relaxing his weight onto the balls of his feet, Damon sunk to a low crouch, extending forward to grip at Elena's ankle and leaving himself open for the briefest of seconds. Elena seized her chance and swung her whole body towards him, driving the knife past the folds of his jacket and deep into flesh.

A look of shock and amazement ran clear across his features as Damon withdrew his arm. He pulled back from the outgrowth of sumac and wrenched the metal from his chest, a bright red geyser erupting from the wound. His let his head fall back momentarily as a faint groan exited his mouth.

Elena crawled out from under the brush, anxiously appraising the scene to which she was now culprit. And as she stared before her in disbelief, Damon's head snapped up, veins sprouting around his eyes, enflamed with an all too familiar primordial urge.

"Clever bitch...I didn't see that one coming," he rasped.

Damon felt along the mound of scared, purple flesh, examining what had once been the site of a wide laceration. He smiled. Then his eyes dropped to the cutlery knife as it lay resting on the ground, ready at his disposal. Damon found most of his strength returning as he retrieved the blade and wiped it to a shine on the leg of his jeans.

"Well, despite the fact that you were inches short of _killing_ me...there's a certain improvisational skill here that I can't deny. And you've brought us this lovely little antique to play with...So thoughtful."

Damon began his advance on her, dexterously twirling the knife in his hands.

Elena's eyes widened. Adrenaline shot through the arteries of her heart, pumping out blood in sympathetic accord, as she quickly turned to take several running strides in the opposite direction.

Damon anticipated this. He shot out like a cannon, assailing her wrists and spinning her round to face him. With his free hand, he positioned the tip of the knife against the cavity of Elena's throat so that she could feel its pressure increase with every inhalation. Elena's muscles contracted down the length of her back as she tried to jerk away, caught between the consequence of the knife and Damon's unrelenting grip.

He revelled in her fight, her hate-filled gaze surmounted by fear and her shallow, uneven breath coming at him in little gusts. From their close proximity, Damon felt the resurgence of his hunger, a hardened devil that called from deep within his belly.

He leaned in towards her ear and spoke in a voice devoid of anything human.

"Lo sono il cacciatore...e tu sei la preda. Do you know what that means, Elena?"

She stood mute, motionless, unable to form an answer.

"It means that I know you...better than you know yourself."

Still grasping the knife in his left hand, Damon released her wrists, trusting, knowing that Elena wouldn't suddenly back away. He slid his fingers along her outer thigh, flattening his hand as he entered up through the hem of her skirt. Damon kneaded the musculature of her inner thigh, gripping the skin hard until he'd worked his way up to the very center of her crotch, where he could feel her heat pulsing against his hand.

"You want me inside you...," he said with a curious, yet savage smile.

Elena twisted her head away from his lips and wrenched herself backwards, attempting a second escape.

Damon's arm flew out, seizing her by the elbow and propelling her to the ground with the same fist that bore the knife. She gasped wildly, refilling her lungs with air and sucking down oxygen. Her head throbbed from the impact and as Elena tried to reorient herself by standing, Damon firmly pushed her back.

"No. We're not finished."

Damon threw off the blood soaked jacket, in a gesture that seemed to amplify his dominance, before swinging down to Elena's eye level and pinning her legs with the full weight of his body.

"No!" Elena finally shouted hoarsely, having regained some of her voice.

"No? But everything about you says otherwise...," he answered as his hands resumed their journey elsewhere, this time lifting the fabric of Elena's tank top and exposing the flesh of her abdomen.

She watched as Damon dragged his tongue smoothly over the center line of her torso, and once more, against her will, she felt hot tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. As Damon's mouth suddenly adhered to the underside of her left breast, Elena cried out in pain, his canines fully submerging into tissue.

"Christ...Oh God!" she screamed as Damon suckled on the wound through his teeth. Blood rushed out, ebbing into his mouth and exiting in a thin line down his chin.

Damon groaned in response, momentarily entering into that blind and senseless state of hunger where nothing else mattered. Then, as his lips and tongue slowed their guzzling, Damon retracted his teeth from Elena's breast.

She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to shut out the agony of sense.

"Come il sangue dolce," Damon whispered lightly against her skin.

"I hate you," Elena returned, without any comprehension of what his words had meant, her ego bruised and deflated beyond all recognition.

"Not possible," Damon assured her as he lifted his head, offering up a dark, boastful smile. Elena scrambled against him in a further attempt to disengage herself and with her last reserve of strength, she viciously jammed her knee deep into his stomach.

But Damon was nothing if not resilient, and her assault had only served to fuel his increasing irritation. He gripped Elena's waist with sudden ferocity and forced her onto her stomach. Mounting himself on the backs of her thighs, he drew up a fistful of her hair and leaned forward to speak directly in Elena's ear.

"Do not, in any circumstance, underestimate what I am capable of. If you push me, I will push back, Elena. Do you understand?"

Unable to nod her head, she mouthed the word '_yes_.'

"Good girl," Damon replied, slackening his grip and releasing Elena's hair. "Now...I think, given the right amount of persuasion, you might come to enjoy our game."

Damon slid his weight to one side, proceeding to rake his nails upward along the length of Elena's right leg. Once again she felt Damon's hand slide past the border of her skirt, brushing his thumb and forefinger in a circular pattern over the curve of her thigh. His hand remained there for some time before travelling upwards again, and as it reached the hem of her panties, Elena felt her flesh prickle. She had to remind herself that his touch _was_ uninvited, that Damon had forced this scenario on her _against_ her will. But in spite of this, and also perhaps because of it, a strong heat began to assert itself between Elena's legs.

Damon felt her response and eagerly slid a finger inside the fabric, running it over the moist slit of her entrance.

"Oh, _Christ_, you're begging for it, aren't you?" he asked rhetorically, lips moving weightlessly against the back of Elena's neck. Damon wasted no time in plunging a finger inside her, feeling her contraction timed perfectly with his entrance. He heard her gasp, even as she tried to prevent the sound from escaping. She hated to incite him, hated the idea that he was eliciting any satisfaction from her at all, but her body had begun to act of its own accord, independent of censure or the prospect of humiliation.

Damon withdrew his finger, tormenting her with the slowness of its exit before entering her again. A spasm of pleasure shot through her core and Elena's neck jolted back a little in reflex.

He repeated this several times before moving into a succession of quick, shallow penetrations, expertly playing her while she rocked her hips in the direction of his hand. Elena found she couldn't stop and that reality had suddenly taken on a loose, druggy quality. She could see the energy trails of their surroundings through the slits of her eyes and was dimly aware of Damon lifting her up from the ground.

She was on her knees now, they both were, Damon's hand never dropping pace as he firmly pressed her body against his own.

Then, as Elena reached the height of her climax, pain instantly exploded from her shoulder. Damon's teeth bore down on her, mouth locked and sucking greedily at the exodus of blood.

Time stretched out. A light pulsed overhead. And Elena fell from consciousness...

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><p>Translations:<p>

"Lo sono il cacciatore...e tu sei la preda." - I am the hunter...and you are the prey.

"Come il sangue dolce." - Such sweet blood.


	7. Chapter 7  Past Lives

Author's Forward (Chapter 7): 06-01-2011

I'll preface this by saying: This is not at all the chapter I intended to write! Characters become more real the longer you write them. They move at their own pace with their own stories to tell. The relationship between Damon and Elena is a bit sordid, yes, but there is an evolution taking place. It's subtle but it's there.

I was apprehensive about including another dream sequence, particularly one so convoluted to write and so greatly in contrast to the previous sex scene! But it will offer some interesting plot developments for the future.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for all the wonderful comments that have spurred my motivation in continuing!

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><p>"This is the rat that ate the malt, that lived in the house that Jack built," the young boy lilted.<p>

He was dressed in period fashion, in his brother's old waistcoat and trousers that were made of the same fabric. His hair was a mottled brown, his cheeks displaying the remnants of a former jelly roll and its filling of strawberry preserve.

"This is the cat, that chased the rat, that-"

"_Shhh_, be quiet! Ms. Calhoun will hear us and we'll have our wrists slapped quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. You don't want your wrists slapped, do you Stefan?

The younger boy shook his head emphatically as the older of the two crouched down and peered out from behind the pantry door.

"I see you both already! Now come out this instant," instructed a woman of surprisingly wide girth and dark, sun-blistered skin. She wore a stern look of disapproval as the boys slowly and very begrudgingly exited the pantry.

"Your father will have a word to say about this snooping business. Now upstairs, the both of you! And be sure to wash your hands and faces!"

From her vantage point in the giant sized, colonial themed living area, Elena watched as the children passed out of the kitchen, exchanging rueful glances and marching in the direction of her present stance. The older boy, who's eyes were a familiar cerulean blue, didn't pause or even lift his head to acknowledge Elena's presence. Instead, his body simply dissolved into hers, possessing all the substance of a fine mist or ghostly apparition. The younger boy followed suit, both reappearing on Elena's opposite side as she turned to watch their departure up the stairwell.

Elena experienced no confusion or distress as these events unfolded around her. The present reality did not seem to be limited by time or space, and so she accepted her role as observer with unusual whole-heartedness.

Few thoughts occurred to Elena as the scenery around her slowly shifted to an inky black. She hovered somewhere within an empty womb of darkness, merely existing. Sightless, soundless and peaceful.

Then, as if a heavy curtain had been lifted, Elena found herself in the center of an impressive garden maze framed by rises of well manicured hedging. Down the center of the path stood columnar rows of juniper, which ended as the maze hedge intersected with another wall. Elena rounded its corner and saw the silhouette of a man and woman, presumably lovers, engaging in idle, flirtatious conversation. The man wore a simple overcoat with matching trousers, while the woman was richly outfitted with an emerald green gown embellished heavily with lace, though her neck and shoulders were left exposed.

Elena's eyes travelled to the woman's face, which bore an uncanny resemblance to her own. Two deeply set orbs, brown as the earth, stood out as the woman's prominent features and there was something else... something ancient and inhuman about her mannerisms, as though she were reeling in the man's attentions and affection, making herself their centerpiece.

Elena listened intently to the couple's exchange...

"And when will you be returning?"

"In a fortnight or two. Not long. To keep myself away for such a time as even that is...unthinkable. Though, I hope you understand, these are matters beyond my control. I'm sure Stefan will keep you in good humour with my absence."

"I know he shall. He has a gentle disposition. Not like yourself, so full of dalliance and passion."

The woman offered out an arm to her companion and, on apprehension of the man's finely set jaw and broad smile, Elena knew him instantly. This was Damon.

Elena was shaken to her very core, suddenly confronted with the inherently bizarre, circus quality of her reality, which was no longer a reality at all, but rather the emergence of consciousness as one begins their exit of a dream.

She found herself crying out silently as she awoke, a thick line of perspiration sitting heavy on her brow. Her whole head ached and her temples were pulsing with the frequency of a strobe. Elena forced herself upright, pulling back the unfamiliar sheet, crisply white and sticking to the sweat of her arms and chest.

The bed was immense, wood-framed and stacked with over a half-dozen pillows to accommodate its sheer width. The rest of the room reflected the same sense of grandiosity, with its suspension of ceiling panels and mahogany walls. The furnishings were sparse and chiefly masculine. There were no personal items to suggest the identity of the occupant, save for a nineteenth-century portrait of a man and his wife, attired in black and wearing identical stone-faced expressions.

Worming thoughts nestled their way into Elena's brain, as she glanced around her, the room's occupant no longer in question. She knew precisely who lived here. The spice of his cologne had saturated the bedding and even the smell of it managed to generate strong feelings of humiliation and defeat, coupled with the memory of their sex.

Now, more general concerns pressed her as Elena spied her bag, carefully positioned on the nightstand, along with an adjacent note. She grabbed for the bag instinctually, wondering whether her cell phone was still in its contents or whether Damon had removed it, anticipating her thoughts of calling for help. Indeed, the cell phone was missing and Elena swore at his predictable thoroughness.

She knew she would have to leave the room eventually but Elena was reticent to explore her new surroundings. She was on his turf now, with barely an inkling of how she'd arrived and without the luxury of transportation. What chance did she have against a supernatural being, who, for all intents and purposes, wanted her for his chew-toy? The questions were becoming too innumerable and far too complex for Elena to answer on her own.

She glanced down at the note, nearly forgetting it in her mental chagrin.

_Elena,_

_I apologize for the state in which you arrived. However, given our limited time frame and your remarkable enthusiasm, I saw it as a necessary precaution._

_Dinner is ready when you are. Hope you're hungry._

_-D.S._

_Apologize? Enthusiasm?_ Was this a new brand of sarcasm or was Damon legitimately trying to win her over? As the latter of the two options didn't seem plausible, Elena felt genuinely insulted and more than a little disgusted that Damon had so casually disregarded the extent of his actions. _She_ was the victim and yet he continued to insinuate that it was all somehow a breakdown of her own moral compass.

Elena paced the length of the room, straightening her clothes and shirking off her emotions. Perhaps it was time for a different approach. Perhaps there was no _other_ alternative...

* * *

><p>The whiskey dragged down his throat, rough and wicked like an Arizona wind, as Damon thumbed through his digital catalogue of music. He had something in mind, something frightening and prosaic. Maybe it was the whiskey talking but he felt this night was calling for a 60's resurgence, a little weathered, rotten punk to go along with his frisky-feeling self.<p>

Damon had always preferred the 60's to any other decade and not solely because the pickings of the day had come easy. Civilization was at its peak as far as he was concerned. The rise in drug culture and sexual revolution had made him feel more at ease with himself, grounding him in the knowledge that perhaps his blood lust wasn't quite so different from the insanity, the droning, and the mad heat he experienced from the crowds at CBGB's and the small, ramshackle clubs of New York. For one brief moment in history, in the midst of the music, Damon was human again.

_Why not? Why not relive a bit of that for the sake of a girl's education_, he thought with a smile.

He sifted through albums, finally settling on a '67 classic by 'The Velvet Underground'. Damon chuckled softly, recalling his encounter with Lou Reed in Greenwich Village of that same year. Now _there_ was a man cut from the same cloth, a true-bred sensationalist and equally as precocious by human standards.

A gypsy sounding viola and sarinda opened the first few notes of his selection. Damon closed his eyes, surrendering himself to nostalgia and mouthing along with Reed's vocals as they cut in.

_"Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather,_  
><em>Whiplash girl-child in the dark<em>

_Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him._  
><em>Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart."<em>

Damon moved his hips rhythmically and tipped his head back as a new set of disturbingly sexed chords filled the space around him. Body rolling with the pass of its hypnotic chorus, Damon swivelled round to pick up the half-emptied glass of whiskey, carrying it deftly in one hand as he half-sauntered, half-danced his way back into the kitchen.

* * *

><p>The snaky beat, with its unusual accompaniment, drifted through the house like bait. Elena was winding her way through the upper hall when she heard it. The music unsettled her, as did the approaching stairwell, which was an identical version of the one she'd seen in her dream. It didn't surprise her. Elena knew from experience that Damon was capable of entering her mind and influencing its thoughts while she slept, though she deemed it a little strange that he had chosen to bring up such wildly arbitrary and personal snapshots of his past.<p>

As her brain became riddled with questions for the millionth time, Elena thought of how suddenly she was having to rely on survival instincts that, for the majority of her short-lived existence, had nearly always lain dormant. Despite the fear, the exhaustion, the indignation, and even the recent hour spent lying in semi-catatonic state on Damon's mattress, Elena knew there was some latent force driving her on, sustaining her in the midst of this macabre dance.

And here she was, in the den of all lions, descending his stairs and following his certain trail into the kitchen...


	8. Chapter 8  Dark Before Dawn

Author's Forward (Chapter 8): 06-09-2011

I can't begin to guess what anyone will think of this piece...as it is incredibly dark at some moments and heavy on the mind play. Elena definitely goes through the mental ringer and the ending ultimately lends itself to a lot of character transition on her part, as well as some foreshadowing into Damon's awakening conscience (oh my word, in this story can it actually occur? lol). Hopefully some of you will have good things to say!

- Peace and happy writing.

* * *

><p>She watched him from the doorway, spooning sauce over two plates and humming along with the currant track, one note droning on against a background of guitar and bass drum. A thick, fragrant aroma permeated the air, filling her nostrils and causing her stomach to growl involuntarily. She hadn't eaten since earlier that morning and Elena found herself welcoming the prospect of sitting down to a meal, regardless of who had cooked it.<p>

"You're up," he said without lifting his head.

"Yes," she answered coolly.

Damon scooped up several items from a large, ceramic dish, transferring them to the plates and licking his fingers when he was done.

He was more casually dressed now, a GQ cover model brought to life in a simple black t-shirt and low-slung, fitted jeans. Under any other circumstances, Elena would have found it oozing sex appeal but given their recent exchanges, this image of well-honed masculinity was definitely lacking in effect.

"I thought a little before-dinner music might be nice. You know, ambience and all that. You like it?"

"Not really."

He glanced up at her mercurially.

"Huh. Well, trust me, if you were as wasted and high as the groupies who used to listen to this kind of thing, you'd probably think different," Damon responded with a slight chuckle.

Elena wasn't sure how to gauge this. She knew that he was speaking from experience and for the first time it struck her that Damon had spent a number of decades living as he was...in his current vampiric condition. Like any sensible person, Elena still wrestled with the concept of a vampire's existence, but clearly there was no other way that she could put it to herself. He had survived a chest wound that no mere human could have withstood without a visit to the ER and had then proceeded to drain her of blood to the point of unconsciousness. The argument was, in every sense, insurmountable.

Elena sighed, her eyes drifting round the kitchen and once again coming to rest on the plates of food. By now, she was close enough to see what had been prepared for them: a braised veal shank, steeped in sauce, tomatoes stuffed with bits of rice and a generous side of vegetables, all carefully arranged as though they were about to be served up to the discriminating palate of some lately arriving and unannounced food critic.

The silence between them resumed as Damon set the two plates onto separate trays. Then he sauntered over to the fridge and retrieved a large decanter. It was filled with a viscous, red liquid that sloshed around as he walked, leaving its trace residue on the upper neck of the vessel. Damon poured it into his own glass, his eyes fixated on the contents as they slid out of the decanter in great glops.

Elena swallowed.

"What is _that_?" she asked, already suspecting what it was and needing very little conformation.

"Fuel for the body," he answered half-humouredly.

"Now, how about we move this into the living room?" Damon motioned her with his eyes in the direction of the trays, giving her a playful wink.

Elena didn't reply. She merely circumnavigated her way round the antique island to pick up her tray and proceeded to follow him out of the kitchen.

* * *

><p>Light seeped in from the living area's front window. The drapes had been pulled back to allow for this, showcasing the window's exquisite construction. Its stained and leaded glass formed a shadowy tapestry that seemed to engulf the whole room in a myriad of shapes and colours.<p>

"The view is much nicer in here," he offered, and once again Elena felt as though the tendrils of his mind had suddenly grabbed hold of her own.

Damon gestured towards a coffee table which sat parallel with the window. He set his tray down and wandered over to the speaker system, adjusting its volume to a lower level. Then he returned to sit in one of the armchairs facing Elena, smiling at her with an air of nonchalance and relaxing into the Italian leather upholstery.

"How old are you exactly?" she suddenly asked.

"_Exactly?_ Well, let's see. Tomorrow, it'll be one-hundred and seventy-two years...and a hundred and thirty-six days."

Elena was shocked that he had even deigned to answer her question. She lowered her eyes to the food on her tray uncomfortably.

"Surprised?" Damon looked amused.

"No. I mean, I know what you are...I just didn t expect you to answer," she said acerbically, picking up her fork and knife and turning her attentions to the business of eating. Elena skewered the centre of a tomato and gingerly bit into the overstuffed skin, its juices escaping past her lips and running down her fork.

Damon smirked as he sawed off a chunk of veal.

"_You_ don't look older than eighteen. You must still be in high school."

"I'm a senior. I'll be finished in June," Elena returned sharply, feeling slightly cut down and trying to compensate for it by her tone of voice.

"My, my, aren't we the testy one tonight. I gotta tell you though, it's beginning to grow on me," he continued affably, reaching for his drink.

Elena found her appetite quickly dissipating as she watched him drain the contents of the glass, the mixture having settled into two distinct layers. Damon blotted his mouth with a napkin, leaving a dark red stain on its folds. Then he placed the napkin on his lap and resumed eating.

"Let's just get this over with. What's the plan? Are you going to drink my blood and then throw me in a dumpster when you're finished or what?"

Elena had surprised even herself by saying this for it was was censure to his motive, detached of any pretence or fear.

"Honey...give me a little more credit than that. I'm slightly more evolved than your average Berkowitz wannabe." Damon's voice was harder this time but he held his composure well enough to slide in another morsel of veal.

"Well, how the hell should I know?" Elena lashed back. She didn't know who Berkowitz was and she refused to give Damon _any_ credit.

"Because I'm telling you _now_," he hissed between teeth and for a brief moment, Damon let her insult get the better of him. The veins around his eyes reflected this, his posture now fully erect.

"Why should I believe you? Why does it even matter?" she persisted, knowing full well that the words would incite him, laying siege to Damon's already precarious mood.

"Get up," he ordered her.

"And what if I say no?-"

No sooner had the phrase left her mouth than Damon was beside her. She had barely seen him exit the chair, let alone cover the distance between their present seating arrangements. The speed with which he gripped her wrist and pulled her to her feet sent a shock wave rippling through Elena's body. The tray was instantly flung from her lap. Shards of glassware and china scattered themselves over the floor amidst a collection of food, its particles having been swept up into the air like confetti.

"I was going to save this for after dinner, but it seems that you've managed to change my mind," he said somewhat hostilely as his hand moved to grasp Elena's upper arm.

"Move."

Damon swung her round so that her back was turned to him, pushing her forward across the length of the living area. Elena's arm grew numb from the pressure of his fingers encircled round it, a strange, anesthetised sensation travelling into her shoulder blade.

He led Elena up the stairs and down the long hall of the second floor. She didn't struggle. She didn't fail to cooperate even as they broached the final few steps towards the room that she had first awakened in - Damon's room. As the abject nature of the situation finally closed in on her, Elena found herself praying to whatever god there was, that he take pity on her, that he let her live long enough to rectify everything - all of her misspent youth, every last and minor transgression. And when it became resoundingly clear that this god was in no position of answering her or had simply decided against it, Elena choked on belief in a higher power altogether.

Damon thrust her into the bedroom and she immediately turned to face him. A cold sweat surfaced from every orifice, her body shaking even as she tried to prevent its reprisal. Elena couldn't determine anything from his expression. It was vacant, uncompromising, as though he was standing on the distant shore of some remote, northern lake, watching her flail and sink and drown.

"Strip," Damon instructed.

Elena stared back incredulously, still half believing that her ears that failed her.

"_Now_," he said, the hard edge in his voice demanding that she comply.

Elena bore down on her back teeth and scrunched her eyes together, taking in a long, inconsolable breath. Then she did as she was told. Elena criss-crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her tank top above her head. She concentrated her gaze at a random point on the floor, unzipping her skirt and easing it past her hips, down the long length of her thighs.

Damon, who had seldom been affected by such things as propriety or embarrassment, watched as Elena attempted to cover the exposure with her arm, finally letting out a disgruntled sigh and having grown impatient with her fumbling.

"The rest," he continued, gesturing at the meagre fabric, which in itself barely served to hide anything of her figure.

Elena blanched and shook her head in protest.

Damon narrowed his eyes, his body shifting into the primitive stance of a wolf, nostrils keenly detecting the scent of smaller game.

"That's fine. I'll do it _myself_," he growled.

Damon's speed was unprecedented as he pulled Elena against him, lifting her and moving forward several feet before throwing her onto the adjacent mattress with the force of a small projectile. Elena shrieked and gripped at its sheets, jerking herself backwards impulsively. Damon clamped a hand over her leg, foiling her plans of retreat and pulling himself overtop of her writhing shape. Fresh teeth extended out of his gums and he tore at the center of Elena's bra, severing it in two and exposing her large, tan breasts. Then, with equal haste, Damon slid himself down her torso and snagged at the edge of her panties, one canine shearing both straps in succession.

Thighs resting on either side of Elena's legs, he pulled back momentarily to stare at her nakedness. The corners of his lips drew into a smile and Damon wondered if he'd ever beheld a sight parallel to this one. Elena's cheeks were flushed with rage and fear in equal parts, her chest rising and falling sharply, her eyes glistening with the innocence of a woman-child who had never known the meaning of a shudder. Damon leaned towards her, catching his mouth on her shoulder and moving his lips until he spoke against her neck.

"Go ahead...hate me. Demonize me. Make me Satan himself...but in the end, Elena, I'm going to make you scream...and you're going to _love_ it."

Before she could react, Elena felt his weight shift as he slid his leg from over top of her. Damon got up from the bed and strode over to an old, lacquered dresser. He pulled one of the drawers open and began sifting through its miscellaneous items.

Elena bolted upright and hugged her body defensively.

"Wha-What are you doing? she stuttered.

"Relax. You'll see," he responded without turning to look at her, procuring a thick, standard-looking rope from the drawer's hidden contents.

Perhaps it was strange that such an ordinary, ever-day object could illicit any fear at all, but for Elena, this was precisely the rope's effect. Damon wound it loosely around his fist, letting one end dangle as he approached her. Then in one fluid motion, he grabbed both her wrists, brought them behind her back and despite resistance, fitted the rope securely around them.

"Now...tell me how tight you like it," he said, resting his knee on the mattress so that it brushed against Elena's bare hip.

Damon made several loops, dressed the knot and set it with a sharp tug. Elena cried out as the blood vessels in her wrists constricted. Gradually, the pressure was released as Damon reset the knot. He placed his hands on either of her shoulders as if to settle her and a small tremor wound its way down the length of Elena's back.

"Mm...just right. Now, lie back for me," he directed, this time in a low, velvety tone.

Elena's heart lurched into her throat as he provided her with the necessary momentum to fall back onto the mattress, one hand pressed against her sternum.

Damon remained standing, towering over her thin frame like a monolith. He drew his shirt up over his diaphragm, pulling it past his head and casually tossing it aside. As the same smooth landscape of muscle and well formed flesh presented itself to her for the second time, Elena turned her gaze away.

Damon's weight sunk into the mattress as he crept over her lower legs. Lips, teeth, and tongue all made their way up the inside of Elena's calf. Damon felt the slow rupture of her self-assurance as he kissed her, his throat suddenly made dry, assailed by the heat of her every pore. He spread her legs open with his palms and eased himself onto his knees.

"Please...please don't do this," she pleaded. It was a weak sound, lacking in conviction.

Damon ignored this, releasing the clasp of his belt and unbuttoning his jeans. A full erection sprung out as he shucked them down his thighs and again, Elena turned her face towards the sheets.

"Elena, sweetie...you're going to spoil my hard-on if you don' t look at me," he baited her.

Elena fought the impulse to open her eyes, falling into the shelter of a dozen kaleidoscopic circles that emerged one by one, from the corners of her retina. She felt him lean into her, every inch of his arousal brushing against her skin.

"I want to see those pretty brown eyes while I'm screwing you," he said, sparing her no filter.

"Go to hell," she returned in a voice barely above a whisper.

Damon acted out of practiced aggression. His hand snapped up to Elena's throat, jerking her head so that her eyes were level with his own. His fingers pressed against the nodes that lay beneath her jaw, restraining her from movement.

"Listen to me...I _go_ where I damn well please. I _eat_ when I feel like it. I _fuck_ when I feel like it...and as it happens, I'm feeling like _both_."

There was no obstruction between them now, no alternative but surrender. Damon's hands were rough and insurgent as he positioned Elena's hips below him.

"God, look at you..." he said in deep appreciation, kneading his thumbs evenly along the underside of her pelvic bone.

Elena's breath snagged, her chest fully inflamed by the presence of blood as it stemmed its way into every arteriole. She bit down on her tongue, desperate to incite pain, as Damon slid the head of his shaft past her entrance. Then, easing back only a fraction of an inch, Damon filled her with more of his length, a silence hanging between them as he repeated the motion.

He took his time, his rhythm unfamiliar to Elena as she stared back at him in violated fascination. She forced herself to consider all the ways he had broken her, but with every small thrust, Elena was driven further from reason, entering into a foreign continent, a carnal realm that had forever been withheld from her discovery. The response was unplanned. Her folds were becoming slick on penetration. Damon had scooped her waist and was bringing her to him, solidly, slowly plunging into her, striking at her nerves and luring her into certain desire.

Elena couldn't get enough air. It sat thick in her lungs, fell heavy on her diaphragm and she opened her mouth to inhale, though no amount of oxygen could remove the sensation building in her chest.

Damon lowered Elena's waist and with increasing speed, he jerked his hips, holding her down to accommodate his entry. By now, there was very little friction and nothing could prevent the heated, sticky feeling between her legs as Damon rode her.

"You like that, huh?" he rasped, thrusting harder as he secured a hand beneath her thigh.

Pain and pleasure were indistinguishable as Elena groaned out her accord. She brought her teeth together over her lower lip this time, in a last ditch effort to maintain control, but instead, found herself torn at by the jaws of her own lust, consumed with thoughts of his body, its wild, icy terrain hitting against her warmth repeatedly.

Damon leaned into her chest, his mouth seeking out hers with an urgency that bellied all preternatural hunger. It was a kiss barren of tenderness, a long lashing of tongue and sharp, remorseless teeth. The bloodlust came and ebbed as Damon felt the sudden clench of her walls around his length. He knew that Elena was fast approaching her threshold. He knew it by the way she held herself completely rigid against him, her skin flushing in a multi-chromatic showing. Elena's head fell back finally, a heedless scream escaping her throat, her hips rocking in violence against his own.

She was his instrument, his white hot audience of gyrating flesh, and Damon felt himself responding to it, enthralled by it. He wanted to give in. He wanted to be human for her but every bone in his body was filled with dead marrow, having long since forgotten what it was to know a woman, to truly know her apart from the blood. And as Elena descended from her precipice, alive and irradiated with hormone, he acted on one instinct, the same instinct that had driven him on for nearly two centuries - Damon fed.


	9. Chapter 9  Hello, Wall

Author's Forward (Chapter 9) : 06-17-2011

Thanks for the comments and questions all! Another instalment has finally been completed. The story is taking a very different direction in my mind, and perhaps I will eventually have to change the synopsis and maybe even the title. Realistically, one cannot solely write about the sexual aspects of a relationship without having it get a little tedious after while, for the writer as well as for the reader. I'm getting an overwhelming number of interesting plot ideas stemming up from all of the action/thriller I've been reading/watching lately, particularly with regards to the doppelganger scenario.

I thought it might be interesting to incorporate a little of Damon's military background here with my rendition of a scene from the Battle of Williamsburg to display a sort of going against the grain attitude as per his carrying a man to Magruder, war be damned! I think he would have been quite an admirable guy back in those days...womanizing aside, and really now, who could blame him for that?

I'm obviously not a Stefan fan, as you can tell...I think he's much less believable than Damon as a vampire, so clearly I won't be putting him on any pedastals in the future.

Thoughts, criticisms and ideas are, as always, welcome. Hope you enjoy! - Peace and happy writing.

* * *

><p>The sound of gunfire rang out. Barrels cracked and muskets rattled as each man reloaded his armament. All around her Confederate soldiers pushed forward through mud and slop and timber, retreating from the skirmishes that ensued behind them, on route to a large, earthen barricade that stood, imposing its bulk against the sky, not a half-mile from their location.<p>

Elena watched as a group of three cavalrymen formed into a tight circle in front of her, speaking loudly over the approaching noise of engaged weaponry. The man in the centre, a lean figure overcome by the weight of his heavy overcoat and out of place amidst the others in uniform, spoke first.

"The northern scouts haven't spotted any reinforcements yet but I'd wager it's only a matter of time before this whole pass is teeming with Yanks, and Williamsburg too. Tell Longstreet we'll flank him on the Hampton Road, but our rear boys are thinning. I don't anticipate we'll be able to hold them off for very much longer. Even with our numbers...two roads is a stretch."

"General, nine-thousand against twelve? And with this stalwart bunch? We're bound to hold them off until nightfall," said the officer on the left.

"General Stuart, my thanks. I'm sure my commanding officer will be pleased to hear it. God keep you, sir, and may He - General..." the officer on the right broke off, turning his head in Elena's apparent direction. He looked passed her, as if into the landscape, and straight into the eyes of an approaching soldier who bore the weight of his companion, a glazed, pale faced curd of a man, across his shoulder.

"Damon Salvatore of the first Virginia cavalry regiment, sir," the soldier announced formally, nodding his head in a brusque salute, though it was clear that even this small movement was difficult for him to manage, given the predicament of his load. His dark hair was plastered in one great wave across his forehead, his face and uniform encrusted with dirt and blood.

Elena was disturbed, transfixed by the scene of things, observing everything down to the last detail.

"Salvatore, yes, I do believe I recognize you. Where is your horse?" General Stuart asked, appearing to be as equally confounded as Elena by the sight of the young man.

"Spooked by enemy fire, sir, as it struck this man's mount. The bullet passed through his ankle and had the horse bowled over on his right leg. I couldn't see leaving him for dead, sir."

At this, the injured man lolled his head in semi-coherency, spitting out his identifier one word at a time.

"Collins...first...cavalry..."

"And where, amongst all our other casualties, do you intend to carry this man?" the General continued.

"To Williamsburg if I must, sir. He's been with me since enlistment," Damon responded, forcing his expression into a wry grin.

"Well...we'll try to square up a mount from the fort. Officer Taylor, send a horse back from Magruder if one can be spared. Till then Salvatore, I suggest that you and your load had better pick up the pace. We wouldn't want to see either of you lost to these blow-hard Yankees," the General returned, his ruddy complexion overcome by a genuine Southern smile. Then he nodded once, signalling his departure to the group, before pulling up his reigns and digging a heavy set of Mexican spurs firmly into the flanks of his horse.

Elena turned her eyes back to Damon, watching as the soldier and his companion resumed their slow trudge up the long, weathered path towards the barricade, its high earth wall calling out like an oasis. Lighter ranks of Confederate cavalry streamed forward now, mud shooting up from under the swift charge of hooves.

"Come on...we're nearly there. Just a few more yards," Damon prompted in an effort to boost the man's morale, his feet lumbering on oddly like those of a drunk.

Their exertions were destined to failure, however, as the sound of a musket exploded from somewhere beyond the tree line, resonating through Elena's body like a sonic blast. She saw the bullet as it entered the lame soldier's back, as it sped out of his chest, leaving an exit wound the size of a grapefruit. Both men collapsed from the force of the impact and Elena found herself awakening once again to a silent, inner shriek and her heart maniacally pumping against her chest.

She blinked rapidly, taking in a few steadying breaths to calm herself.

_Where am I? What in the name of God was that?_

Elena repeated these questions, not daring to move, not yet willing to accept the reality of her present surroundings. She didn't trust the light, even as it dressed her in a second skin of blissful, porous warmth...

_Shit._

She was naked, still lying on Damon's mattress. And that meant she was still in the boarding house...

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

The word droned on unceasingly, never failing to capture Elena's total dismay in every observation as she slowly turned her head to the opposite side of the mattress. Damon lay on his side, facing away from her, giving all the appearance of a man idly dozing, though by definition, he was clearly not a human, and hence any state of consciousness would have proved very difficult to read. His shoulder blades remained within equal distance of one another, unmoving.

Elena glanced up at the ceiling, resisting and finally succumbing to the urge of recalling her dream. She couldn't fathom how Damon had been able to manage getting inside of her head if he was sleeping, or whatever it was that vampires did when they weren't awake. With her thoughts gradually slipping into a long overhaul of Saturday's events, Elena found that she couldn't place the point at which she'd lost self-control - conceding to sex and use as a living blood bag? It probably wasn't good to dwell on, she told herself. Damon had forced her, physically coerced her into an act that she, in any sane, rational state of mind, would never have agreed to. Yes, that was certainly the case here, Elena concluded. She refused to be damaged by the 'event', as she put it to herself and perhaps, if Damon _was_ legitimately out and providing she didn't blunder around the house noisily, there might be a small window of opportunity for escape or at the very least, a chance to find a land-line or her cell phone.

Elena held her breath, drawing on every ounce of stealth she could muster, though this had never been a strong suit. Apprehension coiled down her spine like a thin wire as Elena suspended her hips off of the mattress, easing forward gently and redistributing her weight onto the balls of her feet. She quickly darted her head round to take in Damon's response. Though she couldn't be sure, he didn't appear to be disturbed. Elena relaxed her breathing a little, tiptoeing around the bed and lightly stooping to pick up the remnants of her clothes. Ever more cautiously, she danced over the floorboards towards the door, glancing back once to make doubly sure she hadn't roused him. Damon's solid, still-prone shape was exactly as she had remembered, the sheet still clinging to the line of his outer thigh, his hair unkempt and rumpled against his pillow in precisely the same manner.

_Not such a monster while you're sleeping now, are you?_ she thought in mild satisfaction, resting on the laurels of her near exit.

Elena closed the door only a few inches, barely enough to warrant a small creek from its lazy, ungreased hinges. She mentally fumed at her own stupidity and stood frozen at arm's length from the door, listening for sounds to warrant any movement.

Elena waited for as long as she could stand, her heart relentlessly pounding in her ears as the seconds ticked away, each one seeming like a brief eternity in the great and never-ending chasm of hopelessness that sought to overwhelm her.

But to Elena's utter amazement, the room maintained its silence and while half of her celebrated in triumphant relief, the other half settled back into action, quickly reappraising the hall around her.

Three doors leading into separate suites were situated on the opposite wall. Elena selected the middle door first, quietly broaching the width of the hall and tucking herself within the door's crevice. Then, after hastily throwing on her crumpled tank top and skirt, and feeling substantially decent, Elena surveyed the area which evidently serviced as a second master bedroom. It was somewhat smaller than Damon's, though perhaps this was mostly due to the sheer bulk of its contents; miscellaneous knick-knacks, books, maps, and civil war paraphernalia strewn about for the sake of practicality rather than organization. Elena scoured the narrow margins along each wall, looking for evidence of a phone or ethernet jack.

Then, wandering over to the farthest corner of the room, she spied an old writing desk with a raised structure of drawers. She scanned its cruciform surface, which lay barren of anything but a stack of journals piled haphazardly and a small collection of fountain pens. As her gaze travelled across the length of the desk's rear gallery, Elena's breath snagged in her throat, a symphonic white noise ringing in her ears and enveloping the space around her.

_It's only a photograph_, she reassured herself.

And it _was_ simply that; a faded, burnt sienna portrait of a woman smiling behind a lustrous lock of brown hair and almond skin, her dark eyes, Elena's eyes, beckoning like a siren. Elena reached for the frame and held it out before her, examining its subject in disbelief.

"She was never that interesting, you know..."

Elena's head shot up from the photograph, her pulse instantly racing.

_Damn it. God damn it. He always wins,_ she railed internally.

Damon stood with his elbow propped against the doorframe. He was dressed now, a slim-fitted shirt and a fresh pair of jeans hugging his frame in moral offset.

"...Not your conventional beauty, mind you. All high class in the looks department...but of course, _you'd_ know that," he smiled whimsically past Elena, eyes travelling over the floorboards and dissecting them in his recall.

"It's not mine, in case you're wondering. That belongs to my brother...whose...room you happen to be standing in. I don't think he'd be pleased to know that you've been snooping around in his...personal effects, writing scraps, etcetera...or maybe he would. I can't really say. He's been carrying around that photo for, what is it now...a hundred and fourteen depressing years?" Damon finished wearily.

Elena couldn't decide whether he was being earnest or whether this was simply a story fabricated to satisfy her curiosity. She suspected there was at least _some_ basic truth about it, but what Elena required more was an answer as to why she was suddenly knee deep in a case of doppelganger syndrome and why she, for the love of everything holy, was repeatedly being carried away into astral projection while she slept.

"You seem...put off."

"A bit, yes," Elena responded flatly, finding it easier to assert herself when her hands weren't tied behind her back. "I'm just...trying to figure why this picture looks exactly like me...and I know you're going to say that it shouldn't be _aaa-ny_ surprise because I've seen her before."

Damon cocked an eyebrow.

"I'm not sure I get your drift..."

These words took some degree of fortitude on his part, given that he very rarely assumed the position of 'not getting the drift.' Damon had always prescribed himself to the widely accepted generality that all vampires, regardless of their age or skill set, should in every instance be entitled _to_ 'getting the drift,' whether through the use of compulsion or seduction. It wasn't even really much of an art in his mind.

Elena hid her bewilderment with a scowl. Perhaps he really _didn't_ know what she was referring to.

"Damon...the dreams? Last night...and this morning? Please don't play this off..." she continued in marked frustration.

"_Fan-tastic_. I've bedded a crazy," he returned in cynical fashion, rolling his eyes upward and tilting back his head.

Damon was sure she was delirious, overwrought from loss of blood or simply struggling to form a cohesive understanding of what he was and what he had introduced. It was the natural assumption - a human encounters the unknown and instantly the world is topsy-turvy. Decades of experience had taught him this and often he'd been able to prevent it. There were numerous means by which Damon could side-step any unwanted trauma in his prey, should he have desired it, and he had been very careful in reading Elena. The mechanisms of his thirst were tuned in like a switchboard to the rhythms of her heart, the circulation of her blood, and to a lesser extent, even the hormones that signalled a shift in her emotions. He always knew when he was drinking too deeply, when to pull back, when to push forward. Still, a small, niggling part of him really did care to pay heed of her words.

"I'm not crazy," Elena stated smoothly, planting her eyes firmly on his.

Damon wavered for the briefest of seconds, their glint of concealment drawing him in.

"Then indulge me...and be a little more explicit as to what you're talking about," he conceded finally.

"I am talking...about _this_ woman who you met in a garden maze somewhere and _this_ house where you lived in as a boy, stealing jelly rolls with your brother. And _you_, a soldier, talking to a general about moving your friend to Williamsburg. He's shot, you're down and I wake up thinking - is any of this even real? Or is it all just one big mind-fuck?"

A look of thorough consternation pressed its way into his features. It would have surprised him less if she had whittled down a stake out of some neighbouring chunk of furniture, but this...this was beyond his wildest imaginings. How could she, a mere human and barely a woman at that, have gained such insight into his past? Certainly, he hadn't initiated it.

Damon refused to acknowledge her presence as he clambered over to his brother's mattress and sat himself down on its ridiculously antiquated bedding. A tiny switch powered on his emotional circuitry as he stared blankly at the photo still in Elena's hands. He heard the slow click and clack and grind of his phantom heart. It was firing up. It was coming online.

He balled up a corner of the bedspread in his fist, Damon's anger returning as he ran threw a list of potential reasons for this invasion, this annihilation of what he considered to be a vampire's most sacred of liberties: privacy. His mind had always, _always_ remained an impossible fortress, not just to ordinary humans, but even to the supernaturally inclined, and as far as he had detected, Elena wasn't exactly treading on the grounds of a budding psychic.

If _he_ hadn't instigated it, and Elena wasn't responsible for it herself, then who or _what_ could have been feeding her these lines? Compounding all these details together, he thought of the only semi-living relative who'd been present in those days, those harried mortal years spent much as they were now, with Damon drowning himself in alcohol and tailing the blackest of beauty's in search of something, anything to keep his apathetic sickness from boiling over.

_Stefan._ Stefan of the vegans. Stefan of the morose. Stefan, the ill-fitted and reluctant vampire who was his brother by blood. Even as the thought struck him, Damon found it laughable even to conceive that such a moralist would have had the gall to reveal his history to anyone, particularly a girl bearing any resemblance to that Pierce harlot, lover and maker to both of the Salvatore brothers. No, not Stefan, presently making his weekend run of the Virginia-North Carolina border, no doubt chasing the little forest creatures into sight of their boroughs.

And while he sat there with Elena and her anxious silence beating him down into a pulpy, human mess, Damon was suddenly jerked out of his fog and into acute sensory awareness as the sound of an unfamiliar engine and the heavy scraping of tires made their way up the drive. Stefan didn't usually arrive until late afternoon or early evening on Sunday's and Damon couldn't imagine anyone else paying _him_ a visit.

Defences were quick to mount as he stood, one arm reaching for Elena's wrist. She balked as Damon pulled her forward.

"Right...let's go. Out the door," he ordered, very much perturbed by the interruption and finding more interest in picking through the grey matter of Elena's brain sooner than in answering to the presence of an unwanted caller. It would have been foolish, however, not to err on the side of caution, not to assume that the stranger, now exiting their vehicle, could be any manner of friend or foe.

Elena didn't have the faintest clue what he was trying to accomplish in issuing her back into the hall and leading her into his bedroom. She hadn't heard the car's approach and became increasingly maddened at Damon's refusal to clarify the situation.

"What's going on?...Damon -"

"Don't. Don't start. I want you to listen to me. You're going to stay put, right here, and if I so much as hear the slightest little peep from this room, we're going to have a very serious conversation about manners when I get back," he finished for her, pointing his finger demonstratively and backing out of the room.

Damon reinforced this point by slamming the door before she could object. The sound of metal sliding lightly into a keyway elicited from her a long-winded sigh and as his footsteps echoed through the hall, swift and resolute, Elena returned to the door, turning its handle and meeting its locking mechanism halfway. Stubbornly, she wiggled and wrenched on the handle, encountering the same resistance each time.

Finally, Elena turned and sunk to the floor, letting the moulding chafe against her back uncomfortably as she pulled her legs in. She shook her head in resignation, a prisoner to the room all over again.


	10. Chapter 10 Bon Voyage

Author's Forward (Chapter 10): 06-27-2011

It's final. The story has a fresh name and a fresh synopsis to go along with the recent developments in plot.

This update is primarily Damon-centric. I've tweaked a little of his history, changed a few facts concerning Katherine's escape from the fire, and introduced another vampire into the mix. Events following this chapter will have absolutely nothing to do with Klaus's curse as it is portrayed in the TV series and hopefully everyone will be kept entertained with the future twists and characters that I have planned (insert maniacal cackle here).

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><p>"I'm coming...Jesus Christ, don't get your panties in a knot," he muttered coarsely in response to the interminable sound of knuckles rapping against the front door. Damon hammered down the stairs, looking ornery from the prospect of having to play host to someone so obviously impatient.<p>

_This had better be the Grand Inquisitor_, he thought. _Anyone less and I'll be having myself an early lunch._

He padded over the heirloom rug that stretched itself ceremoniously across both sides of the entrance. Sliding back the deadbolt and pulling open the door, Damon leered into the sunlight, making out the square silhouette of his visitor.

He stood a few inches shorter than Damon, conservatively dressed in an outmoded Brooks Brothers suit that might have been expensive ten or fifteen years ago. It dated him considerably, as did his bowl haircut which overemphasized his angular features to such an extent that he rather resembled a reptile on the cusp of unhinging its jaw. He smiled, though not in a friendly way, the whites of his eyes exceptionally glossy against their wood stained centres.

"Questa e la casa di Salvatore, si?" he spoke the words as fluently as if he were a true Venetian, a creature in contempt of all modernity.

"Yes, this is and I appreciate your...formality, but we can keep it in English, if you don't mind," Damon answered, his curiosity aroused by the visitor's heavy Italian and even more so when he realized that the man wasn't generating a pulse. His odour should have been a dead giveaway, ripe with the presence of old blood and something else too, something akin to the smell of the ground in his father's vineyards, lands that lay on the Tuscany hillside, a soil of ash and dense knobs of clay.

"Very well," he said with another perfunctory smile. "I should introduce myself then. My name is Elijah and please forgive my forwardness, but you...are Damon, yes?"

"As far as I can tell," Damon responded dryly.

The vampire raised one eyebrow in appraisal of him, seemingly nonplused by this attempt at humour. Then, with a dismissive glance, he straightened his posture and continued.

"Good. Then perhaps I might speak with you inside? I've come a long way and would sooner not discuss these matters so frankly in the outdoors."

Damon considered the request for a moment, certain that this enigmatic stranger had not arrived simply to exchange pleasantries. He wondered at the vampire's age, given the archaic flavour of his speech and his etiquette which, by twenty-first century standards, would have been seen as contrived or merely put on for the sake of entertainment. Appearances aside, he was clearly not someone to be tampered with. Damon was sure of that.

"I - ahh...I did have plans, but as long as we make it short..."

Damon stepped aside reluctantly, allowing the vampire entrance.

Elijah quickly strode past him, darting his head round to take in the view from the living room, as though his surroundings were excitingly foreign. Damon was unsettled by this, feeling encroached upon despite the fact that he could barely claim the boarding house as his own permanent residence. It had belonged to his family, one of the few withstanding pieces of history he had left, and Damon held it in fonder regard than he cared to admit. So, it came as no surprise that as Elijah positioned himself neatly in one of the armchairs facing the window and folded his hands across his lap, Damon felt a certain involuntary twist in his bowels.

"Now then, I'm sure you're very anxious to know what this is about. As I said my name is Elijah. I won't bore you with any personal chronicles, as I imagine they would be of little interest to you...I am here solely on the behest of my brother who finds it most pertinent that I address _you_, the last of two in the Salvatore line, with this issue..."

Damon ambled over to a cabinet housing a large reserve of scotch. He decided that if he was going to be forced to listen to this character drone on as if typecast into some period drama, then alcohol would be the crucial mediator. He retrieved a second glass and raised it in Elijah's direction, but the vampire declined his offer with an imperious wave.

"So...to make this as brief as possible, I'll only provide a small refresher to your memory. I'm very well acquainted with the story of your final birthing...the girl, or rather the vampire, Katerina Petrova, having sired you, though perhaps you knew her then by a different name..."

Damon gave his visitor a calculating stare before treating himself to a mouthful of scotch. He found he was a good deal agitated by Elijah's 'acquaintance' with his history. This was twice in one day now that he'd been confronted by someone knowing far too much for his own liking. Had he invited it? Was he wearing a t-shirt with his life story summarized in point form for all the world to see?

Well, thank god for alcohol if he was, Damon thought.

"Yes...she was Katherine Pierce. Go on," he responded, giving up on making sense of his bad luck and trying to move the conversation along.

"Her reasons, any that she may have given you, for her arrival in Mystic Falls, her family's departure, her orphanage...these were all, I'm sorry to say, counterfeit. It was a...an artifice designed merely to supplicate your father into allowing her to live on this estate. Her _true_ purpose lay in my brother's hopes that she would successfully procure an artifact...known to have passed through Salvatore hands and Guiseppe Salvatore himself. I never fully believed this...and after Katerina s escape-

Damon coughed suddenly, scotch exiting his nose.

"_Escape?_ No. That's impossible. I was there. She burned alongside everyone else in the fire at Fell's Church in eighteen-sixty-four."

Damon recounted the events of that dark night which had been so firmly committed to memory. A millennia had passed since then it seemed, changing him, forever altering his course. Everything that had once sustained him was severed from him. Fate had played his existence like a string of notes with their beauties cut off. His lover, his brother, his father and even his humanity had all been cast into the same pit of flames, rising high like the town's hysteria, in the name of Old Virginia and in the name of their Lord and Saviour. He was cold to it now, but oh, how he had writhed and fought and challenged it then.

Elijah continued.

"While this might be what you _wish_ to recall, I assure you, this is by no means what took place. Katerina _did_ escape...under the assiduous eye of her handmaid, granted - Look, I'm certainly not seeking to disturb you with any of this information but I feel it necessary to tell you that she _did_ pass away some eighteen years ago now. Eh...when I say pass away, it makes things sound so human, doesn't it? Really, it was quite a different state of affairs for her..."

"She had been in Bulgaria for a number of seasons, visiting her homeland, taking a brief respite from my brother's employment, you see, when she was staked in the small town of Nessebar. The culprit was found only days after the murder, swiftly put to the stake himself..."

Damon glared out the window, absently swirling his scotch. He watched the sun as it crested above the glass, into the invisible arch of sky, and felt little.

"So, why are you here then? To fulfill some obligation of hers?"

Damon turned his eyes back to Elijah who held his clasped hands in front of his mouth, two fingers forming a cathedral shape against his lips.

"I am here...to fulfil her obligations, yes, and I am also seeking your assistance. My brother has well exceeded his one-thousandth year and suffers from a kind of...infirmity."

_One-thousandth? Good god, he really is the fucking Inquisitor._

Damon suppressed his reaction this time, keeping his drink in his mouth.

"What infirmity are we talking about...and where do I fit into the picture?" he asked, suspicion and mild indignation slowly creeping into his voice.

"I am bound not to speak of his condition...and as surely as you have a brother, you would understand this. But in address of your second question...as I've previously mentioned, there is an artifact once thought to hold a cure for his ailment. It's location has been obscured for as long as we have been searching. In Tuscany, it was rumoured to have made its way into your father's possession, but already he had boarded ship and was making his way to American soil long before we knew the certainty of these claims."

"The artifact I am referring to is a sickle-sword, Sumerian actually...and one of, if not _the_ first of its kind. The inlay...on the dull side of the blade endows it...with certain properties as to -well, I would be speaking out if turn if I said anymore. Do you recall seeing anything like this in your father's hands?"

Damon knew bait when he heard it and he wasn't about to admit to anything that would put him in the position of helping a vampire he'd only just met, particularly this one.

"No. I don't think so...but...when my father immigrated, there were too many items from the estate in Florence to bring over in one trip. He was still having them sent over through the years and I'm positive he had things go missing. You couldn't really trust anyone to organize a shipment like that if you weren't there yourself...as you're probably aware. Not in those days. Not even now," Damon said with a lukewarm smile.

Elijah sized him up like an animal competitor vying for the same patch of ground, his razor-blade stare penetrating every inch of Damon's expression.

"You're certain of this?"

"Pretty sure," Damon responded.

"Well...that _is_ unfortunate. I would have anticipated your father to have kept a better catalogue of his estate, at least concerning this...acquisition. Perhaps you might look into this for me...have a look around and...secure a few more details? It's retrieval would mean a great deal..."

Damon took careful approach in answering. If he simply placated the stranger, Elijah might suspect that he was hiding something but on the other hand, an outright refusal would insight the same reaction. Damon was walking a very thin line.

"I suppose I could check into things...," he finally offered, playing it off as though it were a burden to him, a tedious errand in which he had nothing invested.

"I would appreciate it," Elijah spoke. "Here is a number. Should you find anything, you can reach me day or night, though I must confess...," he continued, retrieving a pen and a scrap of paper from his jacket. "I find the incessant reliance on mobile phones, in this day and age, to be so...nauseating, when we'd gone so long without them. Privacy is always foregone for the sake of convenience, don't you find?

Damon nodded and gave him a false, congenial smile, watching as Elijah scrawled out a set of digits. He folded the paper in half and held it out to Damon. Then he stood, meticulously smoothing out his trousers, nodded back once, and proceeded to make his way towards the door.

Damon followed in toe, his tension slowly easing with the thought of his company's departure, but as Elijah exited the door, he turned to Damon with one last unsettling remark.

"Oh...and Signore Salvatore...please keep this exchange under _strict_ confidentiality. I'd hate to think what ramifications would result from this sort of information being broadcast to just anyone. Do be thorough and see to it that your pet upstairs is made to forget this incident. Human casualties are, after all, _so_ vulgar when one is given the benefit of foresight."

* * *

><p>Elena had her ear pressed to the crack of the door. She hadn't been able to make out Elijah's final string of words but she guessed from Damon's reaction, that they had not been something favourable. Loud as thunder, he came rumbling up the stairs, a sound so jarring that it caused the door to tremble against Elena's skull. She quickly scrambled to a standing position, retreating from its threshold moments before the door was swung open.<p>

Damon shot her a black look as he entered, securing the deadbolt behind him and sealing them inside the room. Elena saw the muscles of his jaw flexing in anger and instinctually she retreated a few steps, lengthening the distance between them. Damon paid this very little mind however, as he marched over to the window and gave a rough jerk to either side of the drapes, shutting out the light completely.

He stood with his back turned for several moments, shrouded in the dark and sensing Elena's restlessness, her anxiety as it swarmed the air around him, heating his nostrils. Finally, he spoke.

"How much did you hear?"

Elena struggled to separate the random voices calling out within her mind, reciting the names, places and events as they'd been described to her from her refuge behind the door. She formed the most succinct answer she could and braced herself for its consequences.

"Everything. Well...nearly everything. I couldn't hear him when he was standing outside."

Damon sighed wearily, forced to reconcile with the truth of Elijah's prediction that she had indeed heard more than he'd hoped. His brows were deeply knit, the skin around his knuckles taut, as Damon considered what he might do with this information. It wouldn't service him any to compel her out of the knowledge _now_, when he'd only begun to scratch the surface of Elena's insights. He ruminated over these, what she had termed 'dreams,' seeking a connection between their advent and the strange visitor who also seemed to know more of his history than Damon could otherwise explain.

A thought suddenly struck him and Damon turned towards her, his eyes gleaming with an occult presence, illuminating his features as brightly as an orange flame.

Elena had never seen his eyes like this before and she didn't dare avert her gaze. She couldn't. His irises drew her in like whirlpools, pulling her down, blunting her emotions.

"I'll only do this once," she heard him say as Damon approached her.

With a dubious frown, Elena tried to lift her legs but found them planted solidly beneath her like mammoth tree trunks, their roots too deeply sunk to wrench up. His hand made contact with her wrist, emitting a strong electric current that seemed to further render her motionless. It was his energy that entered her, travelling through her arm, blistering below the skin and bursting out from her pours.

Elena's features softened then, a tepid feeling settling into her spine as she realized she had neither the strength nor the incentive to fend him off.

Damon had experimented with this on only a handful of occasions. It was true, he had penetrated many minds in the course of his existence, but often this had been done for the sake of a cheap thrill, a gimmick that, over the years, had lost much of its appeal. Now and then it had been helpful in acquiring the odd piece of intelligence, though very rarely had Damon ever needed to pry so deeply that he would resort to the physical establishment of connection.

To see another's memories, to truly _see_ that which was under the mind's greatest lock and key required a more direct form of contact. And so he held her wrist, piercing through its barrier with a subtle, elemental force, becoming her blood and becoming her eyes.

"Show me, Elena...show me what you've seen. Remember your dreams. Mostrami...Tutto quello che sapete," he intoned smoothly and suggestively.

It was a queer and marvellous thing for Damon, to be within this human and to find himself distilling her remembrances as though they were his own. The images came and Damon felt them undermining his usual sense of indifference. This was the peril of entering another's id - the boundaries of one's own thoughts and emotions became indistinguishable from those of the compromised mind. Damon understood this but he also knew he didn't have a choice.

Surrendering his defences, he saw it all in immaculate reconstruction; Ms. Calhoun, the family cook, Katherine in all her regalia, and Collins on his last day, never to reach Magruder. Damon was certain now that no outside force could have generated such inarguable, crystal details. It was something else...surely.

As his hand recoiled, Elena broke from her swoon, her feet giving way below her. Damon spared her from the impact however, springing out an arm to catch her. A long, grievous moan passed her lips, Elena's features slowly reanimating as she leaned into the crook of his shoulder.

"O-hhhh. God, my head...feels like you punched me. Did you...punch me? she asked in a voice that reflected her stupefaction.

"Now, why I do a thing like that?" he returned, laying on the rhetorical sarcasm.

"I think I can...come up with a number of reasons. One - because...you're a callous pig of a vampire...without a shred of...decency," she half-muttered, retracting herself from the support of his frame.

"Well, at least we agree on something," Damon returned with a puckish smirk. He watched Elena hobble over to the mattress in the low light, her clothing in a wild state of disarray and her hair equally so, lying in tangles across her back. He almost smiled to himself in spite of the morning's confusion, conjuring up her former shape, twisting and thrashing in the sweat of their sex.

"Besides, decency is _w-aaay_ overrated and I didn't see you complaining about it last night. In fact...I know _exactly_ how much you enjoyed my 'callous pig of a vampire' self, so don't you even play that card," he taunted.

"Damon...I need to get home. You _promised_ you'd take me home," she entreated him, Elena's demeanour shifting, her soft brown eyes in full supplication now.

"And I intend to," he returned impassively, turning away from a sight that long ago would have had his knees buckling with openly effaced masculinity. These days, his heart really was dictated by callousness, hating to be inwardly touched by a woman's persuasions. Often he thought of Katherine, reliving the ways in which she had abused her influence over him and neglected his affections. It was with a sense of reciprocity, that Damon exerted his own influence, treating the women he bedded and drank from as _he_ had been treated.

Still, he knew that he was in no danger with Elena. Her words were not a decoy for any ulterior motive. She was too fresh and too green to know what her gender was truly capable of and like any of those sweetly sublime wallflowers, she would have probably gone on living her life under the sun, meeting some college kid, half-cocked, bright-eyed and with all of the same ambitions as herself, making babies, doing the laundry, driving the kids to soccer practice, and drinking her sweet iced tea long into the matron years until her little heart ceased to beat.

She might have done all this, he thought. She _might_ have...and perhaps even now there was still a glimmer of that future for her, if he simply returned her to her home, dropped her at the doorstep and bid her a fond and eternal farewell. But how implausible, how naive it was for him to think this, when she might just as equally expose him to...god knows whom or what.

Damon wandered over to a set of double doors sitting adjacent to the room's entrance and switched on the main overhead light. He pulled one door open and made his way into its closet interior.

A thought had been brewing since Elena's collapse, rapidly gaining momentum until it had formed itself into a plan, a scheme that would satisfy his curiosity and carry him to answers. It was a reckless, hair-brained idea and probably something he'd later come to regret, but then again, Damon was nothing if not a full-blooded thrill seeker.

Elena heard the tell-tale sounds of a closet being ransacked. She followed Damon's footsteps, peeking into the small quarters and seeing him stripping clothes off of hangers, piling them atop a partially opened suitcase until the stack was in danger of toppling.

"What are you doing?" Elena asked, as if failing to observe the obvious.

"What does it look like I'm doing? Having tea and sandwiches with the Queen of England?" Damon shot back, stooping to sort and fold each garment.

"You're leaving?" she continued, her features drawn with astonishment.

"_N-ooo_..._we're_ leaving...and lucky for you, Florentine weather isn't all that different from what you're used to. Give me twenty minutes. I'll have you home to pack. We'll do a little yammering with your aunt, maybe a few curtsies. You can get together some hair product...and then it's goodbye U.S.A., ciao Italia."

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><p>Translations:<p>

"Questa e la casa di Salvatore, si?" - This is the Salvatore house, yes?


	11. Chapter 11  The Language of Romance

Author's Forward (Chapter 11): 07-07-2011

Alright, after listening to Trevor Hall's 'Other Ways' and 'Origami Crane' on repeat through the inception and editing process of this chapter, I think I finally have something...a warming up, perhaps a little kindling between these two. The music really lent itself to a kind of lightheartedness and humour that, while it surprises me a little when I reread it, knowing the early beginnings of this story, I find it the natural course now (though not to imply that there will be a lack of dark theme later on). Also, while I can't foil anyone's thoughts on reincarnation...I can say is that there will be an interesting and unexpected twist as to why Elena has suddenly come into his life...

Please let me know if you think it would be useful to have some Italian translations included at the end of a chapter. I will share with you now, what my fiance said to me last night: "Why are you forcing people to Google shit?" This, I thought, was hilarious but when I asked him to help me come up with a language barrier joke for Damon to tell Elena, he failed.

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful comments/reviews, and to those of you have favourited this story or have simply read it! It makes me smile!

Now on to the goodies...

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><p>"Mr. Salvatore, travelling with us again so soon? Third time I've seen you this month," the hostess greeted a familiar face, her smile, which couldn't have been any wider, practically hitched to her eye sockets.<p>

"I hope you're not getting tired of it. I'd hate to have to switch charter," Damon returned with an open, affectatious grin, pulling out all the stops in a flashy showing of his own pearly whites.

"And lose you as a frequent flyer? Oh, no. I wouldn't dream of it," she flirted back, turning to enter the main deck of the aircraft and motioning for Damon and his anxious-looking female companion to enter.

"Glass of Woodsen, Mr. Salvatore?"

"Delia," he began, addressing the hostess as if she were some long time acquaintance. "If you call me that one more time, I'm docking it off your tip."

She laughed and it was a high-pitched, girlish whinny, as artificial as the coppery dye-job of her hair.

"Well, you know how the higher-ups_ l-ooove_ protocol. Have to keep up an image here," the hostess remarked, before moving her eyes to Elena, her envy of the girl's slender figure and her escort to such a well-moneyed and attractive businessman keenly masked behind her servicing smile.

"Would you like any refreshments, hon?"

Elena shook her head, still confounded by her surroundings. She had been lost to the experience, moments, even hours before this, wondering how it was that she was standing in the aisle of a Boeing 787 airbus on a transcontinental flight to the Malpensa Airport in Italy, just nine hours away from the most unlikely, most unimaginable of destinations.

Their carrier was monstrous, outfitted with every possible amenity that one could dream up for a home, let alone air travel. The room in which they presently stood held two coffee tables, two loveseats, four matching recliners, a dining room set with a sofa on one side and a backless settee on the other, and mounted to the wall, directly above the sofa, was a large flat screen television filling half of the room's width.

"Go ahead and explore. Make yourselves comfortable. The toilets and showering facilities are just past the main dining area and the bedroom is at the far end of the deck, if you feel like taking a nap," Delia remarked, though mainly for Elena's benefit, appearing like any usual tourist would, in her cheap dress, with her out-of-season handbag and her looks that had 'economy-class' written all over them.

Then the hostess disappeared into the cabin through which they had entered, presumably to pour Damon his drink and leaving Elena to wonder how it was that a flight attendant could brave such immodestly high heels.

Damon set his luggage down, threw his jacket over the corner of a loveseat and perched himself atop a set of plumply padded cushions. Elena chose a recliner on the opposite side of the aisle, dropping into it, wilting in the opulence of the jet's interior.

Delia returned with Damon's glass, placing it on a napkin before him and smiling more warmly than was generally her practice.

"Here you are, dear. If...either of you need anything, just give the buzzer a ring. We're right on schedule for take-off. Should be about ten minutes."

Elena waited until the hostess had returned to her cabin before saying anything.

"Did you really need to book us a private jet and blow all your money, or were you just trying to impress me?" she asked finally, the room's electric powered door hissing to its full closure.

Damon pulled the zipper to one of his bags, ignoring her and retrieving a recent issue of 'The Florentine,' along with a novel he'd procured from one of the little shops that lined the upper floor of Norfolk International, as they'd waited for their aircraft to arrive. He flattened his newspaper, resting it on his lap as he glanced up.

"_R-iiight_ and how could I _possibly_ pass up travelling executive? There's nothing I find more relaxing than sitting in the sweaty confines of my thirty-inch seat, arm wrestling with my neighbour who's been eating airport food all afternoon, and I know this because he's been passing gas for the last two hours. _A-aand_ in compensation, I can...purchase myself a set of headphones to watch a film rehashing ten-thousand others as I _choke _on my little bag of pretzels and wash that down with a shot of medium grade liqueur. So...yes, we are travelling by personal charter because I _like_ it...and _not_ because I want to impress you."

A short silence hovered after Damon had finished speaking. Elena raised both of her eyebrows, opening her mouth slightly in a look of shock, bewilderment and disgust.

"Wow. How is it that you can be so old and _still_ be such a jerk?"

Damon leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, grounding his surge of temper. Already he had begun to regret his decision of bringing Elena along and ironically, they hadn't even left the airport.

"And how is it that you can be _this_ irate after I've just paid your way for a _Boeing_ aircraft? It's insulting."

"Because I didn't _want_ to be here. I don't want _any_ of this! You kidnap me, compel my family into thinking I'm in some student exchange program and on top of all that, you make me...you...How else do you expect me to handle any of this? Am I supposed to...roll over, do whatever you say like I'm some...some blood doll?"

Damon let her finish, more out of recompense than out of the need to avoid making a scene, though, it was true, they were within a very short distance of the cockpit and Damon wasn't pleased to think of what the crew had already overheard. He was thankful when Elena's voice lowered, her anger subsiding a little when he didn't react and when he simply provided her an audience.

Elena paused, watching the lines of the runway and awaiting the sound of the engines.

"Why don't you just make me forget? Wouldn't it be easier?" she asked quietly, a solitary expression having worn into her eyes, aching under the burden of what it was that she had asked.

Damon thought on this for a long time. With just a few escalated sentences, she had sucked all the fun out of their enterprise, managed to render obsolete the luxury of their surroundings and certainly, it would have been easier on him if she didn't continue to plague him with questions. But now...when she wanted everything to end, an easy escape that he himself might have chosen for her, Damon couldn't offer it. Elena would remain a liability even if he did compel her. Perhaps she would resume her _'dreaming,'_ her recall, whatever it was that he didn't seem to have a word for...or perhaps not. There was no sure way of telling and Damon, for all of his impulsivity and carefree nihilism, suddenly didn't want to take any chances.

"No. It wouldn't," he answered coolly and with this, Damon closed the conversation, picking up his newspaper and immersing himself in its coverage of world events which, in his irritation, failed to take his mind off of Elena and the terrible weight of her sigh as she left him.

* * *

><p>Three hours into flight, Elena stared absently at the magazine she'd snagged from one of the racks mounted in the long hall. She was itching all over from anxiety, stymied by the prospect of entering into a foreign country whose language was completely unknown to her.<p>

Exasperated, she flung herself off of the leather sectional centered in a room partitioned off from the first passenger area.

Looking out the window, Elena watched as they glided high above the Atlantic, blurred over by thick formations of cumulous cloud. She had never flown before today and Elena was surprised at how smooth their travel had been, even their take-off - a memorable thing, despite the nauseous feeling of all of her organs settling into the pit of her stomach.

Safe and insulated within the confines of the aircraft, Elena was lulled into sedentary boredom by the ever present, background humming of the engines. Once in a while, they would encounter turbulence, the jet would dip down to lower air pressure and Elena would experience that same sensation as her body readjusted to newer altitudes.

Curious, she made her way through the electronic door to the first room, observing her companion as he lay stretched out on the loveseat, his arms half-folded across his chest, still clutching a bent book, eyes closed. Elena scrunched her lips together, making a _p-uh_ sound as she exhaled, considering other ways with which to occupy her time.

"Mm...What do you want?" he asked, startling Elena as his knuckles cracked in a stretch.

Elena's head whirled round as Damon pulled himself up to a seated position, looking at her with tired expectancy.

"I was...just seeing if you were awake. I'm kind of hungry," she announced a little apprehensively.

"There's a buzzer for that you know, or is this your way of telling me you're up for something else?"

He cocked her a narrow grin, setting down his book and pulling up his sleeves.

"No...it wasn t. I was just wondering when they're serving us dinner," Elena continued, batting away his insinuation.

"Half-hour...and by the way...I'm starving here myself. Airport security doesn't take too kindly to passengers toting around blood-bags in their carry-on's. Apparently you need a licence for that. _S-ooo_... that leaves me with one of two options..."

Elena shook her head in opposition to the idea.

"Uhh-uh. No way. Not happening."

Damon gave her a look of tall authority, one side of his brow creeping upwards, testing her. Then he stood, shrugged his shoulders and sauntered over to the intercom device fitted above the light switch, next to the room's entrance.

"Well, then I guess I'll just have to ring Delia...who I think will be_ f-aar_ more accommodating..."

He had his finger poised over the buzzer and like clock-work, just as he'd anticipated, Elena's resolve came crumbling down like the great walls of Troy, bastions ablaze and defences undermined by a single Greek horse that, in her case, was Damon.

"No! You can't...I mean...she's just...she's just some stewardess," Elena floundered in her distress.

"And your point?" he asked her.

"I can't let you do that...She isn't in this like I am. It-it wouldn't be right," she murmured, holding back as though she expected him to read between the lines of this.

"_Still_ waiting for the point."

Damon knew he was being unnecessarily cruel now, but he wanted her to say it. He wanted to feel that trigger in his hands as the words came, even if it wasn't real, even if she was just feeding him a bunch of self-sacrificing crap to preserve her own sense of integrity.

He smiled as Elena spoke her request.

"You can do it, alright? Do I have to spell it out for you? You can do it this one time and once you're through...and we've landed, you can find yourself another donor, blood bank or _whatever_."

Damon took several steps towards her, ambivalent as he reached out to brush aside her hair, unveiling the swoop of neckline which lay beneath.

"That's very selfless of you but are you _sure_ about it? I mean...not that I'm trying to sway you otherwise. Invitation does...have its perks..."

Damon's tone was a proposition in itself, yet even amidst its throaty heat, a laughter seemed to belly the sound, an echo to the former night when he had mocked her, prodded her into thinking of him as some Luciferian evil arisen from the depths to torment her. She placed this laugh against the image of a soldier once fighting for a cause beyond his own. Even as she tried to understand it, Elena would never fully realize the nature of the thing that seized him, that need for which he had sold his soul. And who had he been before this? How could she even pity the remnants of that man?

Elena pulled herself out of these thoughts and nodded in stern concession. If this was to be a choice between herself or some innocent bystander, then the answer was obvious. She braced herself for the pain to come...but it was not pain that she was met with.

Damon simply stood against her, hand pressed to the left side of her neck. He grazed the pads of his fingers upwards, past the outer lobe of her ear and into a section of hair, which he let slide out of his hand, slowly, as though he were considering the merit of its texture.

"So noble...hm? So _esemplare_, though I think maybe too much for your own good," Damon said, his eyes impossible to read, rippling through her like a blue Mediterranean, with motives as equally unclear. He pulled away.

"Tell you what, since you have me feeling a little more...amicable, I have another way we can kill thirty minutes," he continued impartially, as though their exchange had been as simple as a game of cards brought to completion.

"So, you're not going to...?" Elena trailed off, still believing that he had something more up his sleeve, something that he wasn't telling her.

"No. I'm not...but I will take a rain check if that's what you're offering. _Meanwhile..."_

Damon retrieved an article of luggage, a sleek, brown leather bag with a flap closure and a brass buckle. He threw back the flap and withdrew an item, one of those Oxford edition translators stocked on the shelves of nearly every book shop that Elena had ever visited. She eyed it sceptically.

"Here," he said, tossing the translator in Elena's direction.

"I picked this up earlier. You were taking your sweet time in the washroom, so I had a few minutes to browse. Thought it might be useful," Damon remarked offhandedly.

"Thanks...I guess," Elena responded, skimming through a few pages and picking out those words which were listed in bold-face print.

"Yeah, well, you know...Couldn't have you wandering around, not having any basic conversational skills. There _is_ more to the language than _'ciao'_ or_ 'pizza,'_ despite what you've seen in the movies. You're quick, though. I think you'll pick it up," he offered, making his way back to the loveseat and seating himself.

"In fact...how about we start over. If you try to keep that teenage drama-queen of yours in check and aren't overly snarky with me, then I will_ try_ to be a gentleman and help you out with that language barrier. Sound doable?"

Now that the would-be virgin neck of their hostess no longer needed defending, or her own for that matter, Elena felt a measure of relief with this suggestion, though less so than she might have hoped. She was still addled by those persistent warning flares going off at every half-second interval and it was very difficult to put much faith in Damon as he playfully tapped the cushion next to his, beckoning her to sit.

"So...is this your idea of an apology?" she asked him, crossing her arms in lack of diffidence and playing up the dramatic element, if only for the fact that he had mentioned it in the first place.

"I never apologize," he answered with a look of such hardened sobriety that Elena found it nearly impossible to take him seriously.

"Now, get your troublesome little ass over here before I change my mind," Damon said, hiding the subtle amusement that had begun to blossom inside his breast as he watched her huffily stride towards him and plop herself down on the farthest corner of the loveseat.

"_Gentlemanly_, remember?" she reiterated.

"Totally. I'm in the process of it."

Snaking his arm across the backrest, Damon tucked in one leg so that his upper body was directly in line with hers.

"Ok...we'll start with the alphabet...and build from there, I guess. Now...pronunciation and appropriate phrasing are key. If you don't _say_ things correctly, you're going to give Americans everywhere a slightly poorer reputation than we already have - that, and you could wind up pissing someone off."

"Example...you're at a hotel, you're trying to rent a room for the night, you pull out your cash, and you say to the clerk, '_Sto cercando un posto di presentare questa in voi._' You think you've asked him if there's a room for you to lodge in, but what you've really said implies that you'd like to lodge your _money_ inside of him."

Elena laughed and it was the first real laugh that had passed her lips in nearly three days. A small chuckle issued from his own before Damon gave her his rendition of a straight-laced, down-to-business look.

He ran through the Italian alphabet, pausing after those letters which deviated from their English equivalents.

"Pretty much the same, except with twenty-one letters instead of twenty-six. _Fascinating_, I know," Damon continued, his eyebrows wagging.

"Same vowels but with _sl-iiightly_ different pronunciations...and they're always short. You say '_a_' the way you'd say 'ah,' a soft sound. 'E' has two pronunciations. The first is like the sound in 'hey' and the second is like the one in 'pet.' So when you say '_bere_,' which is the word for drink, the last 'e' is accented a bit...as opposed to '_festa_,' meaning party, which is softer...Have I lost you yet?" he suddenly asked.

Elena, who had her arm propped up, knuckles resting against her cheek, now gave her head a quick shake.

"No...I'm interested."

"_Alri-ight_...but if you fall asleep, I'm not making any promises. Sleep is a deal-breaker," Damon warned her, though there had been an audible shift in his tone. It was light-hearted, the way he spoke, and Elena found it much easier to tolerate his presence when she wasn't having to keep her guard up constantly, in the face of coercion, slander and mutual upset.

She stared at her companion, evening sunlight peeking onto his face. He wore it so well. He wore it like the expensive clothes on his back. But within...within she knew it was a different face, its splintered ego hurling pieces of itself somewhere inside her.

Again she found the humour in her voice and clung to it, forcing a smile.

"_M-hmm_. Well, I'll give you plenty of notice before that happens. Keep talking."

And so he did. He covered the pronunciations of the remaining vowels and their various combinations, the 'wo' in 'buono,' and the 'ew' in 'chiuso,' with Elena repeating each in turn until Damon was satisfied with her sounds. Elena watched his mouth move with different inflections, trying to mirror them and discovering how fluid the language was when she didn't stop to think about where to place emphasis.

"Those letters that get strung together to make one sound...a lot of people have problems with that, but-ahh...looks like dinner our is here," Damon interjected on himself.

Moments later the electronic door opened to reveal their hostess pushing an elegant silver trolley. She manoeuvred its wheels down the aisle with careful efficiency, pausing before the loveseat and setting the brake to keep its load stationary.

"Would you like me to set up here or in the other dining area?" Delia asked, directing her question solely at Damon.

"Here is fine, thanks," he answered, eyeing the trolley as it was steered towards their table, a glossy slab of ebony wood supported by thick, twisted carousel legs.

"Ah, Delia...did they manage to fill my order? _Pl-eease_ tell me they made it happen."

Delia grinned as she crouched down on one knee, sliding open the cabinet doors of the trolley. Then her head poked up from its service counter as she held up a bottle with a red and gold label.

"Ugh...you're beautiful. Thank you," Damon said as his mouth broadened into a smile. "Hand it over. I'll take care of it."

Damon accepted the bottle from their hostess, handling its neck with near reverence and swiping up the corkscrew that was offered to him. He rotated the bottle, examining its vintage label and authentic wax seal which bore the emblem of the Salvatore legacy. _Semme Rosso_ - red seed. A Chianti Superiore made from a blending of the finest Sangiovese and Malvasia grapes that his family's lands could produce.

"It was easier than you made it sound. Just two calls - one to Norfolk's Winehouse and one to Sonoma. Sonoma's had it and they sent it out in plenty of time," Delia boasted, eager to assure him that her employer had taken care of every detail.

Damon lowered himself onto the table's settee, scraping at the wax seal of his bottle and uncorking it. Elena, however, remained where she was, watching as their hostess took to the convoluted process of arranging dinner. First it was the silverware, tucked away in pressed, white linen napkins, then the red-etched water glasses, the wine glasses, the saucers and their coffee cups, and finally, two lidded serving platters, foggy from the presence of the steam within. As each lid was removed, a rich, zesty aroma announced itself and Elena followed its scent off of the loveseat. Delia made her final pourings of ice water and at last the table was set.

"Conchiglioni with ricotta and spinach...as per your request. It's still _really_ hot, so be careful. I'll be back with desert and coffee when you're ready. Just let me know," she chimed, scooting out of Elena's path and dragging the service trolley with her as she exited the room.

Elena sat opposite Damon, staring at her plate, dazzled by its presentation of oversized pasta shells drenched in red sauce and dusted over with flakes of herb and cheese. So vigorous was her appetite that in the haste of unwrapping her cutlery and throwing aside her napkin, Elena took no notice of Damon as he filtered the wine into two bowled glasses.

"When I was a kid," he began, "My father would have our brand of Chianti shipped over from Florence. It would come...in bottles sometimes, the squat kind, packaged up in little baskets...or '_fiaschi_,' as they're called in Italy. Most of the time though, his wine came in barrels. It was different somehow...better from all those months at sea, mellowed out...woodier," Damon said as he finished his pour, setting the bottle down and watching as Elena broke her eyes away from her platter.

"Have a try," he prompted her, gesturing his head towards the glass.

"I'm underage, remember?" Elena reminded him, as though she expected him to be utterly deterred by the prospect of corrupting a minor, when in reality, a little peer pressure into alcohol was probably the lesser of all evils. At seventeen, even_ she_ couldn't deny having had her experiences with it, a few coolers now and then, and the occasional beer to stifle her brother's nagging remarks of '_loosen up_' or '_grow some hair on your chest_' whenever he threw one of his secret soirès, usually entailing an aggressive mixture of Old Milwaukee, weed and a half-dozen other teenage boys scheming and carousing and making a general nuisance of themselves.

"That is the biggest load of B.S. I've ever heard. Come on, just sip on it. I _guarantee_ you, it'll do more for the flavour of that food...which...isn't going to last two seconds at the rate you're inhaling it."

"Lo non...lo-la penso...cos-i," she spoke in broken Italian, smiling.

"I don't recall teaching you that," he returned, studying her with surprise and admiration.

"You didn't. It was in the common phrases section of my dictionary."

"Ah, well...regardless...you really should have a drink," he solicited. "I'll make you a bet. If you can hold down three glasses, I'll answer all your questions about where we're going and why."

Damon raised his own glass now, taking in a great mouthful of its dark, ruby intoxicant. He ran his tongue along his bottom lip, moistening it, and scraped at the wine stain with his teeth. Still holding the stem of his glass between two fingers, he prompted her again.

"How about it?"

"That depends...What's in it for you?" Elena asked, suspicion once again whispering dark thoughts into her ear, conjuring images of chains and flogging, whips and teeth. _Ok_, perhaps her imagination had run a _bit_ off-track with its depiction of gruesomely medieval apparatuses and torture scenarios. They were, after all, on a jet, fully-staffed and equipped with numerous intercoms, and it was highly unlikely that anything as terrible was going to occur if she did agree to the wager.

Damon grunted overconfidently. Then his lips formed into a sly grin as he responded.

"Why...the pleasure of seeing you shit-faced of course, and besides that, I don't think you'll make it past the second glass."

Elena took this in, hating to be so underestimated, so confined to the limits of her gender and size. It was his stereotyping that angered her most, obviously meant to provoke her into doing something stupid out of pride. How many mouths had salivated, she wondered, over those buxom, small-waisted college-eds failing to hold their alcohol and revealing their tiny bodies one article of clothing at a time? Elena was determined not to be added to their list. Nevertheless, she was naturally curious of Damon's plans, what exactly he had in mind once they reached Italy.

Elena lifted her glass and took an enormous gulp, then a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, _and_ a sixth, until she heard him exclaim between these swallowings, "Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa! Slow it down there! I think you've somehow confused the term 'shit-faced' for 'hurling your cookies.' Sip, for god's sake! This is a four-hundred dollar bottle of wine. I mean...as much as I admire your commitment to winning, you can't just slap it back like it's Kool-Aid."

The wine's flavour, at first only mildly dry, now ran bitter across her tongue, transformed into a hard acid scourge down her throat, and as she drained the contents of her glass, Elena's stomach churned unhappily, quaking and contracting in an awful motion.

Damon's features had collapsed into utter dismay. Certainly, he'd intended for her to drink, he knew she would eventually cave to his offer, but somehow, this wasn't quite how he'd pictured it.

"That was..."

"Dumb, I know...and I'm probably going to pay for it later, but you're going to dish up the goods on this trip, one way or another," Elena finished, trying to extinguish the sour feeling in her belly as she tore at a stuffed shell with her fork, consuming its portions.

".._.profoundly_ dumb..."

"Just pour," she instructed, not wanting to dwell on the subject as Elena continued to pick at the remainder of her conchiglioni.

"You are, without a doubt, the most _obstinate_ girl I've ever met...and I do mean that as a compliment," he said, snatching up the bottle and angling it over her glass.

"Compliment accepted. Now, pour."

The subtlest of smiles emerged from her lips, where wine marks had blotted the edges of their creasing. Absurd as it was, the sight was enough to trigger the on-switch of his ever mechanical soul and Damon found himself afflicted by the nastiest, most unbecoming of all human frailties - _sentimentalism_.

"_Ok_...but if this winds up with you in the bathroom redecorating the floor, I refuse to clean up..."

* * *

><p>Onward and over the Mid-Atlantic they journeyed, still many miles from the port cities of Barcelona, Valencia and Rome, their districts teeming with drinkers, dancers, backpackers, and street performers negotiating all sides the pavement, while Elena, much to her own displeasure, conversed with the washroom's toilet. It was an act consisting mainly of repeated retches and prayers that she be delivered from the misery of her body's present condition. Elena's guts twisted in predictable spite, paying for every bit of alcohol that she'd imbibed - only two and three quarters of a glass. Of course, since she hadn't made it to three, no precious answers were to be had and the mystery of their voyage remained, though not that it mattered, given her lack of interest in anything that required moving her head outside the vicinity of the toilet.<p>

At last she offered up her cheek to the tiled mosaic, rotating beneath her like a mandala, summoning her with its coolness. She curled herself into a fetal shape and lay there for some time, watching the walls as they circled her, trying to slow the objects that moved in and out of her peripheral.

Then, with no way of gauging how or when, Elena felt a damp cloth being wiped across her mouth and two hands lifting her up, up and around, the motion intolerable. But the arms that carried her were as smooth and as wonderfully cool as the tile itself, and she leaned into their firmness, assuaging the acid heat that swirled and rippled in her belly. Sinking gently onto a soft surface, Elena felt the arms recede and in one final moment of consciousness, she grabbed hold of the frigid wrist that was her only means of comfort. The wrist was easily bent and Elena closed her eyes to the winter that slid around her back.

* * *

><p>Translations:<p>

"Esemplare" - exemplary

"Sto cercando un posto di presentare questa in voi." - I'm looking for a place to lodge this in you.

"Lo non la penso cosi." - I do not think so.


	12. Chapter 12  Runs Like Blood

Author's Forward (Chapter 12): 07-25-2011

So far, this chapter has taken the longest to construct. As I have never been to Italy, I had to rely on travel books, Google Earth and numerous websites for most of my research so as to form a setting which would satisfy the plot. I wanted to be as accurate in my descriptions as possible, of the autostrada (highway), the opportunism of its drivers, the New Yorker, monochrome dress of those at the airport, and even down to the fuelling-up experience at an Italian petrol station.

Damon is brutally honest in his philosophical diatribes here and Elena is further disillusioned by it. I think in order for these two to establish a more substantial and believable 'romantic' relationship, there needs to be a mutual attempt at coming to a middle ground. Damon is clearly the more experienced but he has formed quite a nihilistic opinion on life and it will take further evolution in Elena's character to make him realize what he has been overlooking all this time. I feel she needs to be put into a situation which is equally, if not more dangerous, than being with Damon. It's interesting to me that she doesn't choose the 'known evil' in this instance (Damon), but rather she chooses freedom, which, in her circumstance, means that she'll have to fend for herself now, whereas before, Elena was under the shelter of his 'protection.' This to me, impulsive as it is, shows an amazing resolve in Elena to decide for herself and follow her own true will, without having her identity overshadowed by such a beast of character. She will return to Damon of course, but when this takes place, it will be of her own volition. Meanwhile...I think a growing up of sorts is in store for her :D

For those of you who are interested...the songs that are aired over the radio during their drive are "Europe's Skies" by Alexander Rybak and "No Rest" by Dry the River. As for Damon's violin affection...hah, I had to (probably stemming from my grandfather making violins all throughout his life...kind of a subtle tribute, I guess). Music motivates me. I imagine a soundtrack as I write this story, much like the scores and selections of a movie, and I hope that it filters through in the same way that I have experienced it in my mind.

Anyhow, enough with the rambling...please enjoy!

P.S. I've updated all chapters with translations featured at the bottom.

* * *

><p>A voice came, born outside of dreamlessness.<p>

"Hey...hey, lightweight. Come on, up and at 'em..."

The onslaught of sound was accompanied by a full orchestra, scratching, plucking, pounding at her ear drums as Elena awoke. The slits of her eyes remained tight, while within them the blackness turned like a ferris-wheel, whirling round her corneas repeatedly.

Damon shook her by the shoulder, yet even these light ministrations were swept up into her nerves, causing a dull, feverish ache to pass along her arm. Elena scooped at her pillow, curling her knees to her chest and pressing her weight deeper into the mattress. Her lips moved.

"U-uuugh."

"Yeah, I know. You feel like shit...Can't imagine what _that_ must be like," Damon said, releasing his hold on her shoulder.

Elena opened her eyes only marginally, peeking through a striation of lashes and grey, circling haze. She watched as the shape before her redressed, turning its back, flexing a fan of muscle, and snatching up a white button-down strung over the edge of a chair. Elena blinked several times, trying to clear her vision, but the details of Damon's features were as obscured as a reflection having passed through murky water, opaque and shivering. She saw him in profile, fitting each arm into a sleeve and fastening his shirt three-quarters of the way.

"What...time is it?" Elena mumbled, judging by her presiding stupor, that she couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours.

"It's seven...Central European Time. Which would make it...twelve in Virginia. And we're about to land, so I need you to get dressed," Damon answered, tucking his used clothing into the side pouch of a suitcase, one of several now situated in the room. Then, unzipping Elena's luggage piece, he sorted through an assemblage of items, eventually selecting two of the worthier garments - a smock-waist camisole with a front placket and for practicality's sake, a black denim set, which he quickly tossed across the mattress.

"Put these on."

"God, I don't think...that'sss-" Elena slurred, managing to prop herself up on her elbows but failing to support her head as it slumped forward. Her stomach seized momentarily and she reigned in the overwhelming need to disgorge its contents.

Damon shot her a withering glance. Elena's once olive complexion was painted in the sallowest of yellows and she moaned sickly as she fell back against the mattress. He sighed, her condition obviously warranting some greater cure beyond the conventional Aspirin and a glass of water. Damon swore in low tones, castigating himself for his negligence in offering her alcohol and inviting this onerous predicament on both of them, which would only prove more inconvenient if airport security intercepted them at the gate. _Not_ in any way preferable, he decided as he approached the head of the mattress.

"That bad off, eh? Alright..."

As she lay on her side, eyes unaware, Elena felt a moist bead trickle across her upper lip. Perspiration perhaps - yet another symptom of the hangover. Elena flinched uncomfortably, riding high on a nauseous wave as her stomach churned up another bowl full of suffering. A second bead made contact with her teeth, slipping over their ridge and entering her mouth. Bitter as an aged penny, liquid as iron drawn from a forge, the drop collided with her tongue. She identified it immediately, Elena's eyes snapping open, focusing on the shape that hung over her - _blood_, not even her own blood but Damon's.

"What?" she burst out.

"Giving us both a gift here. Now, stop talking and open your mouth," Damon ordered as he thrust his wrist between Elena's lips, preventing her speech.

With a furtive head-shaking, Elena's tongue thrashed over a clean site of flesh, wiping off the residue of blood, but Damon lodged his wrist more firmly, so that her jaw was locked around its circumference. Several thick beads collected in the reservoir of her tongue, yet Elena refused to swallow.

"Drink!" he spat harshly, canines partially descended, his patience with her fully breached.

With his arm positioned as it was, bearing down and prying apart her teeth like a jack to a car, Elena held the mouthful until she could hold it no longer, giving in to the reflex of swallowing. His blood, swimming like a thick, red brine, eased down her throat with unbearable slowness. Unpleasant as it was, Elena found that it was not caustic like the wine she had consumed earlier and with its displacement, its gradual dissolving into tissue, Elena felt a new sensation cresting over her nausea. Seconds passed and a glorious relief hit her, abating the pain, returning coherency, and as the throbbing in her temples and forehead diminished, she ceased her struggling, relaxing her lips and letting the stem of blood issue between them. This vitriol, this harsh, salted drink was a balm to every hardship she could sense and Elena fought past her swallowings, knowing what he had known all along, knowing that it would restore her.

Damon relinquished pressure on seeing this, feeling some essence of himself depleted. He watched her, honing in on her life force as the color in Elena's cheeks renewed, her eyes opening into quiet gems, pupils dilating in the light. But this was not an ecstasy, as it would have been for him, merely necessity. She would tolerate it only so much as it serviced her, as any other human would have.

Damon retracted his wrist in solemnity, observing the wound as it closed, forming an invisible scar over those that were innumerable. He picked up the garments formerly set aside and offered them to Elena, who lay with her palm covering her mouth, concealing its stain and erasing this with the lengths of her fingers.

"Get dressed. Clean yourself up and...rinse your mouth out," he said brusquely.

Elena took the items, perplexed by the sudden attunement of her every joint, tendon and muscle as she stood, gauging their strength and flexibility. Many of her former thoughts had been estranged by this and she stared at Damon acutely, wonderingly, but her would-be escort maintained such a firm look of reservation that Elena held her tongue, balling up her clothes in corresponding silence, and made her way towards the door.

* * *

><p>There was little conversation as they dragged their traveller's armaments through a typical airport scene at Malpensa, which was all very ordinary to Elena, having been under the assumption that even the arrival terminal would be marked with an atmosphere that was definitively 'Italian.' She refrained from saying so however, not wanting to appear like some Appalachian hillbilly who's only exposure to the world entailed a monthly jaunt to the nearest Wal-Mart.<p>

Bombarded by a multi-cultural throng of escaping passengers, they slid through the cracks, filtering between families pushing luggage carts and strollers, and the business-savvy, clamouring away on ear-piece, chicly attired and self-importantly thrusting their bodies forward into a sea of textiles - dark leather and nautical sports coats, pale knit cardigans, lightweight tunics falling over black leggings, all layered to perfection.

Damon himself was not eclipsed by the severity of these fashions, dawning a chocolate leather blazer and a paper straw fedora, which he drew further down his forehead as they proceeded towards the exit.

Passing through the first terminal's sliding doors, Damon scoured the line of taxies and miscellaneous parked cars, until he sighted the vehicle he had been searching for - a black Aston Martin Volante, an exotic looking convertible with a sleek hood and a gun-metal grill.

Elena saw the direction in which his eyes had ventured and glared at the car's immaculate exterior, buffed and polished to a brilliant shine and superseding her expectations once again.

_Of course_, she thought contemptibly, _he couldn't rent us something practical...like one of those little electric cars or a Mini. Nope, it has to be the most stupidly expensive thing he could think of. And he'll probably say he wanted the leg room or the frickin' trunk space._

A service driver stood beside the vehicle, waiting. He possessed many of the features of a local: deep set eyes, a long, straight nose and compressed lips even without a smile. Damon hailed the driver with a slight wave and the man issued back a friendly 'buongiorno.'

"Stai Signore Salvatore?" he asked officially.

"Si," responded Damon, reaching into the chest pocket of his blazer and producing a passport which he held out to the man for inspection.

The driver nodded, passing off his set of keys and speaking enthusiastically, "Excellente! Ho appena messo in un serbatoio pieno. Corre come un sogno!"

Then, without missing a beat, he ran through a mandatory spiel on vehicle policy and insurance, safety features and rental return. Sadly, his hurried rhetoric fell on deaf ears with Elena, whose only insights into the conversation were a few conjunctive words and a noun or two, and she was very glad when, after assisting in the loading of their baggage, the driver bid them a fond 'arrivederci' and returned to his company car.

"Well, _that_ was enlightening. I swear, if he'd talked any faster, he would have given himself whiplash," Elena quipped when the man was finally out of earshot.

"I think that was the salesman in him, though...you're going to find a lot of people speed-talk around here. That's just because you're new to the language," he responded with an arrant laugh.

As both bodies moved for the right hand side of the vehicle, Damon offered her the usual wagging eyebrow, ushering her in the opposite direction and cracking open her door.

"Passengers sit on the left. Drivers on the right."

"Ri-iight. Right. Sorry," she said with an equal dose of acerbity.

In the time it took Elena to fasten her seatbelt, Damon had already climbed inside the Volante, thrown aside his hat and struck up the car's ignition.

* * *

><p>They headed south, the landscape imperceptibly shifting, beginning to move into gentle slopes clustered by hamlets, their alabaster, stone and terracotta coloured houses roofed with Roman pan and barrel tiles, some with high arched windows and sills festooned by flowers, others plainer. It seemed to Elena that these buildings, strung together between wide pleats of hillside and hanging below the curve-swept jaw of their horizon, would one day be lost to a slowly encroaching wilderness. It lingered and slunk into the villages, overcoming even the tallest of structures; cypress trees, vines and creepers coexisting alongside walls and terraces, young roots sprouting up from planters, hemming doorways as naturally as if they were apart of the residences themselves.<p>

In a number of areas, the houses were newer, already succumbing to symptoms of neglect and suffering from the harried, modern-age lifestyle of their occupants. Mini-Vetts, small-bedded trucks, and Autobianchis, painted in the brightest, most vibrant of shades imaginable, dotted the roads and stooped driveways as they passed through the region's smaller districts.

Elena thought it all wildly surreal and it was not with a sense of unwillingness that she allowed herself to be captivated, filling up the stores of her memory box until it swelled over with pastoral imagery - a lifetime's worth, she hoped. Damon, however, had remained coolly distant throughout most of the drive, preferring to keep his eyes fixed on the road, unaffected by the Tuscan splendour which plastered itself across the windshield. He switched on the car's satellite radio, channelled through a few of the local stations and finally settled on something international, one with a folkie sounding, upbeat fiddle.

Ever since he'd first set sail on the Atlantic, with a new aesthetic to welcome him, Damon had eagerly trawled across the European continent, partly maddened, partly intoxicated by its unfamiliarity. In sober moments, he found himself acquiring a taste for more than just the blood of foreign women, prostitute and aristocrat lovelies alike. Fresher, sweeter sounds had awakened to him on every street corner, peddled in bars, played in the illustrious halls of the Bourgeoisie, escaping from the simple setting of a farmhouse on days of celebration, and even struck out at sea. What he'd come to love the most in those days, was the sour melody of a flat-bridge violin, the double and triple-stops sung out of Ireland and Scotland, where there'd been no shortage of entertainment or crudity, and Damon, in his recently won freedom, could indulge himself in whatever, whomever he wished.

He sighed as a preposterously love-sick vocalist interrupted what might have been half-way decent listening and switched to another station.

"You didn't have to change it. I thought it was pretty good..." Elena ventured, frowning a little in disappointment.

"_Please._ It was Euro-pop trash. People have written better Hallmark cards," he retorted.

"So jaded," she snipped back with a roll of her eyes.

"Always. Besides, what is it with all this sugary, melt your heart out, I'll-die-if-I-can't-have-you crap anyways?"

"Residual from the eighties," Elena answered with small chuckle.

"_Trust_ me, it's been residual for a lot longer than that. Ever since the beginning of time, our little hominoid friends were scratching out love notes in the dirt. You take a guy like Shakespeare or Tennyson, two men with a bit of cultivated sense, but no political backbone whatsoever. They pull out a few good lines but mostly, what are they remembered for? The martyrdom of star-crossed lovers, the iambic pentameter of weak-kneed fence-sitters, commiserating over their own _feelings_."

How was it possible, Elena asked herself, that anyone could cut down the works of men so genuinely appreciable? It was _far_ too cynical an argument for her liking and so she prepared her response carefully.

"We studied Tennyson in my writing class. He was a Liberalist, totally game for social reform...and you're also completely overlooking all of Shakespeare's political satire," she said very seriously, pleased that her high-school education was paying off in some department. Damon merely scoffed.

"And _you're_ missing my point entirely. What I'm_ trying_ to say is that there's nothing useful or profound in talking about _posies_ or _fairy queens_ or comparing your love to a summer's day when it's all dead in the water anyways," he returned in mocking emphasis.

"The fact is...we're all beasts, Elena, whether we see it that way or not. Love? Goodness? Moralism? None of those exist except to satisfy our own selfishness. _Life_ is selfish. That's just the way it is. And the sooner humans start accepting this and stop being such hypocrites to their own desires, the better off they'll be."

She stared at the lines which pressed themselves into the bridge of his nose unforgivingly. It was as though he had always existed this way, a tall, hyperborean, steel plated half-god looking down on civilization as though he knew its inner clock and had seen into its deepest sanctum of secrets. Perhaps he was out to prove its cruelty because this was what it meant for him to live, to provide for his body, to ensure that he kept on living. Elena didn't know which way to take him.

"So...you're saying that nothing can truly be selfless or good? That everything a person does or feels is just a by-product of some self-gratifying instinct?" she asked finally.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," was his only reply.

"Then why did you to try to save your friend, that soldier? Why did you try to drag him to the barricade? _You_ didn't have anything to gain by it. In fact...you could have been killed right along with him."

"It wasn't in my best interest to watch him die," Damon answered, the sun overtaking his eyes as he concentrated on the painted lines before them.

"And that's not useful...or profound?" she persisted, not wholly believing that Damon could have sequestered all feeling towards the events of that day, no matter how distant.

"I'm not that man, Elena. I am very far from being _that_ man and that one _useful_ act - it's obsolete against a million others."

Elena watched his head turn, his fingers stiffly roped around either side the steering wheel as though he were channelling all of his agitation into his hands. His eyes were an unconvincing facade, waxed over, trying for the absence of something as Damon switched on the radio again and filtered through several more stations.

A sadness touched her as Elena observed him. She hated to acknowledge his words as truth, needed to believe that there were motivations beyond the selfishness of ego - a higher, more universal principle, concerning virtue. She had always assumed that a basic goodness was present within everyone, that even the most tarnished heart was capable of redeeming itself. It was the source; the source of an emotion would always dictate its end. Lust would breed lust. Hate would breed hate. Fear would breed fear. Composites to the contradiction of living, they would elevate or pull apart the best of intentions...but those honourable acts memorialized throughout the textbooks of history, of men in service to other men, beyond any impassivity of will, well, if goodness was to come from anywhere, then surely it had come from these.

Elena swallowed down her lump of melancholy and gazed over at the mounds of earth rising and falling around them. The red had drawn her, its brightness chasing her down and demanding she look. An opiate weed of Bologna, the poppy, bordered the roadsides leading away from Sasso Marconi, arranging themselves like the droppings of a bloody rain, while in between their spacings, an intermittent dandelion cast up its spiky head to the sky.

_"I used to be a king alone,_  
><em>Like Solomon or Rehoboam..."<em>

Winds whistled, the convertible's purr feeding into the sound as the radio played out a choir-air, British single, its layered voices strangely ascending, soft and sombre.

_"And in this, a corvée day_  
><em>Did jealous keep my picture frames<em>  
><em>And everything did oxidate in place..."<em>

Damon shifted his eyes a little, catching sight of Elena's posture as she sunk low in her seat, head tilted towards the eastern hillside in silent contemplation. He hesitated, reluctant to break peace with her, but a thought pile of words had already formed and were asphyxiating him by their muteness.

"In Goro...I killed a man...a captain and shipping commissioner. He ran a cargo business off the west coast of Italy. It was eighteen-sixty-six and he'd agreed to take me back to Europe with him, in exchange for a few favours. We were at sea for almost thirteen months...thirteen vile, fucking months. I was a clumsy and inexperienced, and finding a meal was a bit of a problem. Even more so on a ship. I couldn't kill any of the crew, so...like any ignoramus, I seized up every rat I could get my hands on, subsisted on them, _filled the void_, you could say. But I was raw on the inside when we docked, more raw than I could stand..." Damon paused, large creases settling into his brow, the slit sides of his irises boiling over with heat.

"You don't know, you can't think...all you can feel is your wasted insides coming apart. The rigger has his hands on the ropes, and he's splicing them. The sun is coming up and that work-horse, acrid sweat is sitting on his shoulders...but you don't care. All you know is the sound of that pulse, ready to blow straight out of his neck..." he halted himself in the darkness of his retelling,

"Well, like I said, we anchored and unloaded most of the ship's freight, took up a few provisions afterwards and made our way to nearest bar. Our good ol' captain plastered himself with Menabrea - such a dried up husk, a bristly old man on his last leg. Still, he'd been close with my father, working to move out items from our family's estate and bringing them back to the colony."

"I listened to him rattle on for hours about his days at sea, about trips to Africa and South America, how no destination had ever resembled anything like the markers on his maps..."

Elena never broke her gaze throughout his speech, while Damon, who's own eyes never touched her, changed in and out of the left lane. Though his hands maintained their casual assertion over the wheel as he glanced at the traffic behind them, it was clear that Damon was somewhere else, not beside her, not present to the noise around him but somewhere inside the wrenches of a memory, its blackness trickling over his countenance. With breath suspended and fingers anxiously twitching, she waited for him to continue.

"We finished our drinks, stumbled our way into some random alley, and that's when it hit me, hard like those gales over the Atlantic, harder even. That old man's gristly neck was the sweetest fix I'd had in months but when he finally crumpled, his bones knocking on the street, his mouth open in the widest grimace I'd ever seen, I could have swore he'd stolen something from me...the same way I'd taken his life. I tried to settle the whole affair and make things right between us, so I took his packet...dragged him right out to port and left him to the Adriatic. The sea swallowed him up, carried him away, and I thought maybe, if he hadn't made that bargain with me, maybe one year, five years from then, he might have died in the very same spot."

"After that, things changed. Life lost its _rosy_, _peachy glow_ and suddenly I knew - I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that what the world had to offer me and what _I_ offered it were the same thing. And there wasn't any sense left in pretending."

Damon fell into silence then, finding something in his explanations to be inadequate, perhaps even improvident. By rights, he should have said nothing on the subject. He shouldn't have felt _any_ need to justify his left-handed approach to anyone. He should have kept her in the dark. Elena had no business knowing any aspect of his past, particularly those of the sordid variety. But to be liberated, even in speaking of it, had he been drawn by this prospect? To be free of the suffrage of that mask, to be himself, if only for a little while, and be seen by eyes that hadn't been compelled into seeing him.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" Elena asked. Her voice was disconcerted, nervously edged, though she was trying her best to hide it.

"If we're going to be spending any length of time together, then you need to understand my position on things. I'm not -" Damon stopped himself, glancing in his rear-view mirror for the near-hundredth time at the bronze Mercedes pressing a mere car's width behind them.

The Autostrada Del Sol was built to accommodate one to three lanes, a two-way road travelling north and south through the provinces, and for several miles now, Damon had taken note of the car as it slowly advanced on the line of traffic in front of it, cautiously darting into the second lane only when its concentration of vehicles dwindled. It wasn't uncommon for tourists to travel long distances by rental, though most would opt for taking the train, rather than unnecessarily suffer the cost of mileage. The operator of the Mercedes however, bore a native driving influence, a subtle mastery that no foreigner could have picked up without spending more than a few hours on the high-speed motorways of Italy.

Damon gradually released his step on the gas, the convertible slowing to a moderate cruise as he waited for the vehicle behind them to pass. Instead, the Mercedes slowed along with them, maintaining its distance and prompting a few choice words from Damon.

"Oh, for _Christ's_ sake, get on with it!" he shot out temperamentally and Elena, giving him a speculative eye, turned her head round to watch as the Mercedes withdrew further back, allowing for more room between the two cars.

Scowling at his centre rear-view mirror, Damon reapplied pressure to the gas, the engine toiling away discordantly and bringing them up to speed with the rest of traffic. Yet just as he did so, the driver of the Mercedes closed the gap, badgering the space between the convertible's tailgate and its own front bumper.

"You've got to be kidding me. There's another lane! Move!"

This time Damon gestured at the driver, swinging his arm out and making his message apparent. The car refused to back off, however, purposefully asserting its course and stirring up questions in Damon's mind as to what its objective might be. This was not a Civetta, the secret vehicle of a law enforcement officer, and neither was it any that he might have recognized. He squinted to see the driver, who wore a thick set of shades, half concealed by a visor that deterred him from making out the stranger's upper half of head. Something about this made Damon very anxious. Surely it wasn't coincidental, he thought, despite having informed no one, with the minor exception being his travel agent, of his intentions on leaving the country. Damon treated this thought with the usual dose of scepticism and opted for a different means with which to extricate them from the path of the Mercedes.

He saw a road-sign marking the next town at five-hundred meters. Rioveggio, a touristy village of the commune of Monzuno, was nothing so peculiar or interesting, but as the convertible needed refuelling, its meter having dipped below the quarter tank line, Damon would settle on it as a detour, if only for its expedience.

He gave no mention of this to Elena, simply waited, kept the vehicle straight until the very last moment when he swerved tightly into the exit lane, the rear end of the car losing traction briefly as it spun in its former direction. A strangled cry echoed shrilly from Elena's throat and the Mercedes responded quick enough to jerk its wheels left, missing the rear end of the convertible by a near yard as it continued down the roadway, unable to make the same turn.

"Jesus! You could have told me you were going to do that!" The words fired from her mouth like missile.

Feigning the intrepid look of a stuntman, Damon paid her anger no mind as they headed towards a toll booth, his one hand gripping the steering wheel, his other reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, lifting his hips as he retrieved the plastic card, a Telepass, which would pay their way without necessitating a stop.

"How else was I going to get that asshole off our tail? he responded, shimmying back into his seat and deferring from any explanation involving the nature of the driver's aggressive and suspicious following. He hadn't understood it himself but he _had_ listened to instinct, an instinct which told him that, if it wasn't a cop and it wasn't simply an instance of indiscriminate road rage, then perhaps there was some deeper motive, something as calculated as his own reason for returning to Florence. Perhaps there was even a correlation. Again, he sloughed off his paranoia, making the turn for Rioveggio and laying on the brakes as they made their short decent into a sprawl of three-storied buildings coming together in a mixture of stucco and cemented stonework.

"We need to gas up. There's an Esso up ahead...and I'm guessing you probably need the washroom," he offered.

"Yeah...sure," Elena returned absently, pretending to be engrossed by the stream of bistros and cafes competing for business on either side of the street, though none of these did she scrutinize with any manner of sincere attention.

She had begun to recognize with greater regularity those moments when Damon turned evasive and yet it seemed that she could barely gain entrance into the twisted, labyrinthine workings of his brain. His guards were manifold and his actions, though never arbitrary, were always far from predictable and even more impossible to figure out.

She gave up on the attempt as Damon pulled into the Esso, parking in front of a self-service pump and affording the station's gas attendant a little respite during his one hour lunch period.

"Two minutes," he said as they both climbed out of the vehicle. Elena nodded, giving her limbs a long stretch before wandering to the open doors of the petrol station.

On entering, the scent of coffee grounds so branded the store's air that Elena felt it seeping into her nerves from sheer exposure. After a sweeping examination of the area, eyes making contact with those of the store clerk and praying that she wouldn't be drawn into a one-sided conversation with the man, Elena found the washrooms by their plaques, displaying the same white stick-figures that she had long grown accustomed to seeing in America.

Damon had taken his time in following her from the vehicle and just as she had slipped through the appropriate door, Elena heard him speaking casually with the clerk, his accent slick and steady. She tucked herself away, listening as he paid for the gas, hearing the obligatory 'grazi,' and the crisp sound of his shoes as they moved across the floor's fresh wax. Then, after she'd made use of the facilities, she stood before the washroom's mirror, appraising her reflection and sighing.

Thoughts seized her as Elena turned on the faucet and ran her hands through a stream of cold water. She smoothed her dripping palms across the sides of her face and vigorously scrubbed at her mouth, usurped by a stronger recall this time, a taste arisen along the inner side of her tongue. She bent under its return, the sense of that slow-creeping, bitter restorative washing away her miseries and aches. For it wasn't solely Damon's blood, not his alone, she told herself, remembering the story of the ship master sent out to sea, but the essence of every man and woman, every vessel that had filled him, their veins shrivelling into extinction. Elena had consumed a portion of this now. It belonged to her, severing her from _good_.

Yet even then, in her lamentation, she remembered the coolness, the stone-smooth satisfaction of Damon's arms carrying her to a mattress, how she had pulled them against her unconscionably, selfishly clinging to the ease which they'd brought her. And he had lain there, a murderer, a cynical horror, locking his icy hand on her side and issuing her into sleep.

She had known what he was long before he had told her of these memories...but perhaps it was in the details of them, the precise climate and circumstances which had afforded Damon the reason to abandon all his inner principle, casting off the used skins of his humanity and devouring the world one body at a time.

Elena touched her lips, staring at herself in the blue florescent-lit mirror. That wide-eyed girl so tenderized by fear, once shepherded by a town and family now miles from reach, she was moving out of sight, an orphan beating her fists from within the glass, waiting to be recognized by the stranger who observed her. Who would save that girl and for that matter, what was she to be saved from?

An impulse grew, a cortical aurora breaking over the gloom of her thoughts. She saw herself running, feet flying somewhere past the Esso, down the cement roads of their modern hamlet, to anywhere, away from the one who had stolen her. But was she really so desperate? To escape so unpreparedly from the Stockholm syndrome that had reduced her to nothing but an accomplice, a secondary participant to her own life. _Her_ life. So self-assured, so confidant she'd been once, not a genuine risk taker but a pragmatist, an optimist surely, someone she used to admire but couldn't now.

Fear still had its place, accompanying the natural worries that struck a person who's window had come, a time for entrance into the wide and frightening world with only herself to rely on. She couldn't imagine getting back, making her way out of Italy alone. Still, she had her passport, her translator and her wallet which held a debit card that would give her access to bit of cash, though not nearly enough for a return trip.

Shaking, Elena pulled open the door to the washroom and glanced around for Damon. He was still pumping gas, his back turned, his shirt ballooning out like a canvas sail in a sharp wind, tufts of black hair held aloft and glossy in the afternoon sun. He would spare her another moment, a few at best, before coming to look for her. He would know her options of exit...but could he follow? Perhaps he wouldn't bother. Perhaps he would decide that she wasn't worth the trouble, that she was to him an expendable appendage which evolution had dictated no need of. She hoped for this somehow, and yet she pitied the solitary, uninhabitable island of flesh on which she gazed. He was the wild thing roaming those places where humans like herself feared to tread, a lost boy grown within agelessness, a lizard-tongued _other_, while _she_ remained the product of her generation, like the failed heroine of so many novels, disparaged of her prized yet unobtainable ideals.

Truly, this ideology _had_ fallen and so to salvage its remains, to salvage herself, Elena watched as the preoccupied store clerk restocked a commodity of paper cups, lids, and stir sticks in service to the espresso machine, along with the store's numerous price-gouging coffees, eyes never lifting from his task. She darted past the cash counter and through an unmarked door leading into the storage room which housed a mashing of the petrol station's inventory. Cases of tobacco, dry goods and beverages lay on tall stacked pallets, making the path to an exit door unobvious. Nevertheless, she located it, clutching the silver bar that ran across the door's width as tightly as though she dreaded what was on the other side. Then she drew it open, letting out the stale warehouse air, unsettling all its dust and debris, and burst into unknown freedom.

* * *

><p>Translations:<p>

"Buongiorno." - Good morning.

"Excellente! Ho appena messo in un serbatoio pieno. Corre come un sogno." - Excellent! I just put in a full tank. She runs like a dream.

"Grazi." - Thank you.


	13. Chapter 13  Strange Encounters

Author's Forward (Chapter 13): 10-25-2011

Dear Readers...

I apologize for neglecting my little fiction for so long. Life happens obviously. It's been difficult to find time, what with coursework and my two year old son romping about the house and needing to fill _every_ bit of floor space with his toy collection lol.

For a visual aid, picture De Luca's character as a mid 90's, Italian version of John Malkovich (less attitude lol). That's just how I see him in my head I guess. He'll be popping up again later, as will the woman in the Mercedes, who we've yet to be introduced to. I came up with the idea for this old European vampire after seeing "The Hunger" (a great Bowie flic for those of you who haven't seen it).

I almost opted out of writing anything from Damon's PoV in this chapter simply because I wanted to keep the focus on Elena. He's like the elephant in the room, gargantuan eye candy that just demands to be written and read about.

The fresh plot will continue. For now...enjoy.

* * *

><p>Atlas himself couldn't bare the load, she thought. And the load was increasing by the hour, with her adrenaline plummeting and time winding its merry way down the road to evening, when, if all else failed, she might find herself squeezed behind some iron cast lawn ornament or slunk against a set of steps leading to the home of some svelte looking suburbanite with great shoes and a well-turned-out life, left to wallow in the carrying, muffled noises of dinner parties, their hosts and hostesses exchanging laughter and phrases of familiarity with their guests.<p>

Pessimism was now the word of the day as Elena hunched further over the smooth, sparkling tabletop, circling her hands round her upper arms, bracing the weight of her body as she breathed and soothing herself with the smell of her remaining coffee. She'd ordered it strong, with a shot of espresso and loaded it with cream and sugar to offset the taste and make it go down easy. While the cafe boasted a homemade assortment of panini, light pasta and vegetarian cuisine, Elena could only justify an order of two cannoli, having it in mind that she probably wouldn't be in the mood to stomach anything more. As much as she craved a fuel injection of caffeine, rich food, alcohol and perhaps the aid of one or several narcotics, Elena chewed slowly, managing to get down a whole cannoli without much in the way of discomfort.

It had all gone surprisingly well. One couldn't have planned for a more convenient escape, in fact. The bus stop hadn't been a mere block from the petrol station and for a reasonable fee, accommodated for city to city travel. She'd only had to use her credit card twice, once to purchase a ticket from Rioveggio to Piana Cinelli and on the next occasion, to Vergato, heading along the Via Roma and as far from Florence as money would carry her. All in all, it wasn't much of a distance, yet, assuming that if Damon had chosen to track her, it would only be a matter of soliciting the ticket clerks for information. From what Elena had gathered from travelling, these cities were relatively small and although tourist activity appeared to be on a steady incline, it certainly wouldn't be impossible for Damon to pinpoint her location simply by speaking with the locals.

Emotions did churn at this thought, giving way to a rapidly mounting anxiety that snowballed into near hysteria as Elena stretched out her arms to cradle her cup of coffee, gripping it as though it were a last anchor to a positive mindset. Her eyes waxed over with worry as she tried to make some attempt at focusing in on the scenery of things. Her ears funnelled strange and approaching noises, everything the cafe had to offer in terms of distraction.

"Dove e la tua ragazza?"

This phrase was preceded by a woman dropping her purse, its contents jostled amongst a rattling set of keys. A waiter clicked his pen in aggravated response. A laugh suspended itself between tables and again, the same phrase was spoken, louder this time, more direct.

"Dove e la tua ragazza bel sorriso?"

Elena glanced up from her coffee and cannoli, eyes transcending beyond the glumness of their stupor, the voice marrying with the image before her. She was not forced to lift her head up so far, for the speaker was confined to the seat of his wheel-chair, its steel frame awkwardly bent, wheels crookedly offering their support to a man, probably in his early forties with thick, receding, black hair, combed into a center part. The waves below altered into wilder curls, just reaching the line of his shoulders. The man's features were pleasantly weathered, time and experience having showed a surprising favour to him, though his large, angled brows and pointed chin bestowed him with a birdlike oddity.

Elena shook her head to demonstrate her ignorance.

"I...non parlo Italian."

"A-hhh, you are American, yes?" he asked, making note of the obvious accent.

"Yes," Elena responded, relieved that she could reconvene her speech in English but nonetheless wary of being approached by a local, unassuming as this man was with his soft stare and evident handicap.

"So sorry, you did not appear so," he continued apologetically, as if he had somehow mistaken her appearance for that of an Italian born woman. She had observed this herself, that it would be difficult to tell her apart from those natives passing her on the street, given her own dark looks.

"You are visiting Vergato? ...A tourist?"

"S-ssort of..." Elena replied, wisely inferring that it wouldn't service her to delve into the details of her circumstance with the first stranger she came across, no matter how desperately she wished for it. After all, who in their right state of mind would believe her? And it was hardly worth summing up the story of her kidnapping if she were to eliminate all of the more crucial and supernatural of details.

Elena maintained a certain half-truth in her explaination.

"Actually, I'm looking to head back...I haven't had a very good trip here."

This response seemed to satisfy him and he nodded.

"Ah, I see...It is true that Tuscany does not make life easy for everyone. The city tries. The tourists come but they are not always welcomed in the ways they desire." The man smiled bitterly as he said this, casting a glance towards a side table where two women sat, their conversation bubbling over like the foam of the cappacinos on which they sipped. Their words were rich with heavy gestures, their mouths moving excitedly, here and there flitting their eyes over the infrequent line of pedestrians slipping past the veranda of the cafe, equally unaware of the fact that they too were being observed.

Sucking at his small, square teeth, the man perceived these subtleties as an artist in the midst of disassembling a subject. His eyes rolled back to Elena, examining her with the same intensity and thoughtfulness.

"You have...that stranded look I see when an American is caught on the wrong road. When I saw you from my table, I thought you might be...how we say here - _Essere come il ceppo del battuto. Che le busca sempre._ The wooden board where all the vegetables are chopped, always getting hit - _that_ is your face. Too sad for someone who looks like you," he said.

Elena felt transparent. She thought the man eccentric for making such a remark, accurate as it had been.

"Well, that's a strange way of putting it, though...I guess I must look like that. It's been a long few days," Elena finally admitted, biting down on her tongue so that she might remain within the filter of her thoughts and not go on to burden him with more information.

"Do not feel so badly. You are not the first. These things are little teachers to us all. You stay. You go. You are lost, you ask a generous person for the way. You spend your money, you make more of it to buy what you need. It not worth beginning your grey hairs now," the man finished with a good-natured laugh but watching Elena, his mood shifted into something more subdued.

"I am sorry...I speak too much. I make it out of my little house one time, two times a day and speak with everyone as I go."

"No...that's alright. I'm more or less stuck here anyways and besides that, you're the first person who's said anything to me all afternoon. I just...I don't know what I'm doing here. I speak thirty words of Italian, _if_ that. I don't know how I'm going to get home and now I'm unloading all my baggage onto a complete stranger," Elena responded, shaking her head in sheer exasperation of the situation.

"I will tell you my name and then I will not be strange. I am Savio De Luca."

He offered her a simple smile as he said this, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, removing one and placing it between his lips. Then he retrieved a lighter from the same pocket, struck up a flame and set it to the end of his cigarette before taking a deep inhalation. After he'd blown out a long stream of smoke, Savio nodded his head in Elena's direction.

"So...you are stranded. Where is your family? Your travel companions?" he inquired, puffing on his cigarette again, smoke wisps lacing around his long fingers and lazily drifting across the congested veranda.

"The...person...who I came here with, he wasn't what you might call the _best_ of company. He...well, anyways...long story and something I'd rather not get into right now," she phrased carefully, allowing for the stranger to infer what he desired from this.

"Unfortunate. I am sorry for you."

"It's fine...I just need to find somewhere to stay, maybe a quick way to make some cash if it's not too impossible. I don't know."

"Not impossible, no. It is too early for the fruit and olive pickers but...if money is what you are concerned for, there is a man, the owner of a theatre, Teatro Meila, not far from here. I have known him for six years now, one who owes me more favours than I can count on both hands. He has hired immigrants before...for cleaner's duties and he may be persuaded to employ you for the same - short term, of course. He can pay you in cash and board...if you are willing."

He spoke in the most matter-of-fact of ways but Elena, who's wits twisted about her in answer to this unexpected proposition, regarded him with open distrust, looking for the trap, seeking out the motive which guided him.

"Why would you offer me that? You don't even know me," she asked.

With liquid calm in his voice, Savio continued, "It is like how I have already said - you wear sadness on your face like a woman wears lipstick. You are right to be wary but you are also in need of something good to happen to you, and it is not so often that I am in the position of helping someone. Mostly it is the other way round. Please, allow me to provide you with directions, a phone number perhaps. It will take only a moment. I have this information in my rolodex and I..I live but a short distance away. _Please_... "

* * *

><p>She halted before the threshold of the first floor apartment as Savio fumbled in his pocket for a set of keys. The overhead light combined with the filterings of sun from an open window painted the little hallway in a whimsical sunflower yellow, a strange, invitational colouring juxtaposed against Elena's feeling that she might appear to anyone observing them from within the hall, an escort employed by the middle aged resident. Staring at the diamond motif of the carpet, she waited, examining her shoes and particles of dirt, clutching at her arms in awkward silence throughout the humming and hawing of the man as he finally pried open his door. The smell of old tobacco perforated the air's musty warmth, leaking out from the walls and furniture of the main room, entangling itself with the odour of sandalwood and watered earth, issuing from the many planters which decorated the nooks and crevices of the apartment's interior, some half wilted, others thriving.<p>

Elena remembered a time when both her parents were alive. Her mother's long withstanding cultivation of indoor plants had verged on obsession and the tasks of trimming and pruning and collecting dead leaves were never shirked. Elena, at four years, would carry the bright green, plastic watering can from the kitchen to the other rooms of the home and back again, dreaming they lived inside a solarium. But the plants had died not long after her mother, and despite numerous tries, Aunt Jenna, in lacking her sister's experienced green thumb, simply couldn't maintain them all.

Savio wheeled himself along a cross hatching of brown tiles before giving pause, smiling rather peevishly and tucking back a lock of hair.

"I apologize for the state of my apartment. The maid comes only on Wednesdays."

"No worries," Elena said with a nervous smile as she watched the figure traverse the area in his chair, clearing off a stack of newspapers from a striped sofa and dropping them onto an octagonal shaped table which served as the room's only centrepiece. The rest of the space was occupied by a lounge chair, a television unit, several bookshelves, which stood nearly as high as the ceiling itself (apparently the man had a means of getting the books down), and a massive writing desk with a typewriter sitting atop it.

Savio must have known where Elena's eyes had fixed, for he answered her silent question as to the near obsolete piece of office equipment, which he had cherished for near eons; that old familiar factory noise, the swift chop and grind of its levers as they descended onto fresh stationary, ringing out from the idle machine like a memory cut into the cells of his ears and fingertips.

"She has been a remarkable thing for me to write with. Twenty-seven years have passed and I _still_ go back to her. The pages that I am most proud of, if they are worth anything, it has been because of those keys. I have had computers...I have a laptop now, which I take with me when I cannot take my typewriter, but it is a poor substitute."

"You're a writer?" Elena asked, her interest piquing a little as she glanced over at the bookshelves, overburdened by their collections of leather bound texts, paperbacks and encyclopaedia sets, a number of these volumes encased behind glass, thin layers of dust coating their spines.

"I am a novelist, yes. I have made some attempts at playwriting and more...editorial based styles, but fiction is the basis for most of my work. There are some which have been translated into English. If you wish you may browse. It will give me time to locate my friend's address," Savio replied, waving her in the direction of two wall-mounted units containing the bulk of his own publications.

Elena was obliged to accept the offer, turning to the shelves with a look of engagement while Savio made his way towards the writing desk, strategically situated below a large bay window, which was the room's only source of natural light. One panel had been opened, bringing forth the occasional, unpolluted gust of air, the window's plain, diaphanous curtain puffing in and out as it shifted against the desk.

Elena stared at the books. It was like solving a rubix cube, she thought, this trying to assign a meaning to so many titles, their spines quietly and cryptically mocking her.

_Undici. Il Mago Italiano. Nuovo Scienza e Filosofia per il XXI Secolo. Un Angolo dell Universo. _

At least thirty volumes sighted Savio as the author, each one thick enough to warrant a length of four-hundred pages or more. It was evident that his wheel-chair days had not been spent in aimless pursuit and from the few words within her comprehension, Elena decided that he was clearly a man in no shortage of profound ideas or insights.

As her gaze slid over the lowermost shelf, Elena spied a set of gold letters, raised, bold-faced and in English. She read them aloud to herself.

"The Vampire of the Sun."

Savio lifted his eyes from the rolodex which he had been sifting through.

"Ahh, that one is from two-thousand. I took the advice of my editor and submitted it to an American publisher recently, thinking that it would be better received in a country where esoteric thought, the popularity of the vampire is so...media driven these days. He said _eh_, it would be a waste...not to capitalize on this."

Elena stole the book from its perch, turning it open to read its insert.

"A German vampire..." she said, half murmuring to herself.

"The name is a bit of a misnomer, though...he was deemed as one by society. In reality, he is much more than that, a kind of primitive experimentalist...looking for the philosopher's stone of _immortality_. He succeeds in modifying himself in a way that makes him...stronger, superior, taking his body beyond death. It was a story born out of my studies in classical literature, alchemy and of course, the occult."

"So...it's not about a real vampire then?"

"Real? No, not in the traditional sense. Is this...an interest of yours or for novelty's sake that you ask?" He gave her a most scrupulous look as he said this, picking away at the surface cracks in Elena's features. It was in the way that she'd phrased the question, the sudden rigidity in her spine, the manner in which she pursed her lips afterwards which conveyed a certain discomfort to him.

"Both...I suppose," she eventually returned.

"Then we are like-minded. I cannot deny these topics fascinate me -" Savio broke from his speaking with the sound of a standard ring-tone and the small jerk and thud of a phone as it vibrated against the desk. He flipped it open to examine the number and on its recognition quickly turned towards Elena.

"Excuse me for...for one minute. I must take this," he said as he accepted the call, wheeling himself in line with the nearest doorway. Elena tried to afford him a little privacy by distracting herself with one of the pages from his novel, yet she found herself grappling with a sudden need to listen in, which, in any case, would have been rather fruitless, given the abrupt and one-sided nature of the dialogue.

"Si?..._Ok..._Che, adesso?...No, ora andra bene..."

He was agitated. This was clear from the way he drummed one finger against the narrow armrest of his chair.

"Naturalmente, e qui per voi...Ci vediamo presto."

Savio hastily ended the call and switched off his phone. Creases of worry strangled out any youth in his appearance, stealing it away from his placid lined mouth and aging him in a matter of seconds.

"I am...sorry that I cannot spare you more time but it seems that I have forgotten an appointment. You will have to leave...but before that..." Savio returned to the desk, resuming his harried search and cycling through the cards of his rolodex.

"Ah! Here it is," he said, hands never ceasing their movement as he promptly tore out a blank card and copied down the information.

"Find yourself to this address. Tell Signor Capaldi that it was Savio who sent you. Explain to him everything you have told me and I am sure he will not turn you away. I have written down my number...should a situation arise and you wish to contact me, but do not return here unless...it is absolutely an emergency. I cannot stress this enough, that...it would not be safe...for yourself or for me. Now, you must go. Please."

Reaching out for the card as it was offered to her, Elena did as she was asked, though not before giving him a long, examining look. Her footsteps faltered on her even as her logic of harder education commanded that she avoid asking the more obvious of questions. That curious cat, always dominating her conscience, wound its hairy, little tail around Elena's legs, stalling her inevitable concession of retreat. Why had safety suddenly become an issue, she wondered. Elena closed her lips, drawing them together with a patchy resolve that was just enough shove the metaphorical cat aside and make her way back to the door of the apartment.

"Thank you," Elena managed with a touch of rust in her voice.

He nodded brusquely in response and she left him, closing the door quietly and seeing herself down the yellow hall that was more faded than she remembered, its paint chipping in many locations, lack-lustre from the frequent scrubbings of the cleaning crew who, try as they might, couldn't quite combat the lingering smell of cigarettes.

Elena's throat tightened. Or was it simply the moment? A dim, miasmic recall of her hours before this seemed to find passage in her airways, constricting them. She breathed heavily through her mouth, giving Savio's card a quick once-over and passing through the main lobby of the apartment complex. Clutching the card, Elena prayed like a revivalist. She prayed that it would renew her hope and sort out a permanent residence for that feeling inside of her, taking away the badness and restoring her now disillusioned youth to its former glory. Savio's well-meaning gesture had begun to make this possible for her. He was a kind man she thought, despite the later of his requests, which had sounded rather doom and gloom when she considered it now. Maybe he had a good reason for it. This was Italy after all...a country once a haven to the most notorious of criminal syndicates - the _mafia_. So perhaps it was something illegal...maybe drug cartel. Criminals used people like him didn't they? The inconspicuous, unassuming kind. The kind one would never expect or...was this only something she'd picked up from movies?

Good god, he was handicapped! She was completely over-blowing the situation. There wasn't anything wrong. There couldn't be. She was going to get herself to the...Tet-something or other theatre, impress the shit out of this Capaldi someone, barbarically miniscule language skills aside, get herself hired and -

A vehicle hummed and warbled, grabbing Elena's attention as it squeezed itself between two cars, the only space remaining for the entire block. Its motor idled as she squinted against the sun, sitting lower on the horizon now and glaring off the rooftops in bright, electric orange. Like a phantom shape croaking out sounds of artificial life, the car impressed its visage into her, sitting there on the rough, slanting cobbles - a boxy, bronze Mercedes that, if she wasn't mistaken, bore a certain resemblance to the vehicle which had pursued Damon's rental so assertively that morning.

Elena waited for the driver of the vehicle to exit and as luck would have it, she was not forced to wait for very long. She watched as a tall, lean body emerged from the right side door, wearing dark, familiar sunglasses and a flat-lipped expression with a sexless ownness. The driver was a woman. Her gait and narrow waist confirmed it, walking as though she were impervious to the jaggedness of the road with her stylish pumps, suit-style slacks and silk blouse hanging low over her brassiere in decollet fashion. The sun hit her in a strange and awful manner, presenting her like an overexposed photo, skin white, eyes caged behind the glasses, translucent blue shadows echoing their way down her throat. The woman's hair, fine and white like corn-silk, was staunchly sown into a tight, plaited braid that swooped round the back of her head, at once giving her a severe and authoritative presence. With a sharp, feline movement that was not indelicate, the woman navigated her way across the pot-marked road, bumps of stone protruding fatefully towards her heels.

Swiftly timed, her shoes hit the road with a click-clack, click-clack, shattering the street noise. The rich and wandering speech of the neighbourhood denizens passing by with their animals, the jittering of a cyclist's wheel and the rustling of nearby leaves as they extracted the day's mild heat, all turned dim in the atmosphere of her moving. Elena jerked forward a half-step, removing herself from the woman's path, and watched in addled confusion as the tall creature raised her sunglasses, inspecting the girl with a cursory look. Behind her glassy, lizard's stare, a flare of recognition sparked, something akin to the transient interest that is struck when one encounters a familiar thing, the stranger who seems to evoke a memory. Her agenda, it was clear, did not permit for the luxury of a social exchange and she continued on steadily, silent in her mission across the little courtyard from which Elena had just exited.

Elena's vision of the woman did not adjourn even as her form faded into the complex. Turning her head once more towards the Mercedes, she could only let her eyes gape, her thoughts jarred by the inescapable turn of events which the day continued to bring her. It was a blessing, most certainly, that the woman had not engaged her in conversation, though the likelihood of this, she wagered, was probably slim to none. There was really no point in dwelling on the woman's recognition or her reasons for tailing Damon, if indeed Elena had pegged her correctly. And what did it matter now? She was a free bird...albeit more strapped for cash than she might have wished.

Elena turned over a few more nettlesome ideas as she stood by the edge of the roadside, shifting her weight and reorientating herself towards the west.

* * *

><p>Wallflowers these days were less predictable than their grandmothers, Damon finally supposed. Niches and patterns and behavioural ticks could amount to very little in the grand scheme of things. But surprise? Now, <em>this<em> was an element never to be overlooked and surprises _always_ pleased him...usually. In point of fact, Damon had never been on the receiving end of any of the surprises which came to mind, but there was no denying a small part of him had been intrigued by this radically ballsy and radically brainless (he'd settled on both) attempt at flying the coupe.

Such flare. It was almost worth the trouble of seeking out the bus clerks who'd handed out her ticket and making a few slight detours from the original plan. Time was not an especially crucial factor in this instance and he would have found it highly improbable to turn down such a challenge regardless.

He'd watched her from the interior of a shop sitting opposite the cafe, trying on hats and paying false admiration to several trinkets neatly arranged for a front window's display. He'd smiled, though only a little, at how nervous she looked, as though at any minute she suspected him to jump out, taking her by surprise and stealing her away to another remote location. Or perhaps, this was only an assumption. She might have been pale as a sheet for other reasons, which had only then occurred to him, and he couldn't help but feel indignant towards her struggle in being so dauntingly misplaced, so confused and out of her element. He thought he sensed a whisper of her fear, the faintest of touches from her mind, rampaging with hormone, but this was so slight that it had barely drawn him any pleasure at all. And even if he'd been standing inches from where she sat, the pleasure would have been the same, dwindled like the tip of a flame as it is smothered out slowly, beyond the point of one's will. The fear had always brought pleasure. It was as predictable as the cycles of moon and tide, and certainly he relied on it as much as he relied on the blood. It was his passport into life, a reaction brought about by that which is outside of one's self.

He remembered his subtle rage at this, at this new growth of apathy that she'd seemingly caused within him, she who simply wanted to get away, little girl Alice chasing the white rabbit, missing her own appointments and being drawn ever further down the hole. Yet, he felt that he should let her continue, not solely for the sake of breaking her, but now also for the sake of seeing ingenuity at work...

* * *

><p>Translations:<p>

"Dove e la tua ragazza bel sorriso?" - Where is your smile beautiful girl?

"Undici. Il Mago Italiano. Nuovo Scienza e Filosofia per il XXI Secolo. Un Angolo dell Universo." - Eleven. The Italian Magician. New Science and Philosophy. A Corner of the Universe.

"Si?..._Ok..._Che, adesso?...No, ora andra bene..." - Yes? Ok What, now? No, now will be fine.

"Naturalmente, e qui per voi...Ci vediamo presto." - Of course, it's here for you. I'll see you shortly.


End file.
